


Atlas

by Saerus2665



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), SPECTRE (2015), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: 00Q Reverse Bang, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fantasy, Friends to Lovers, Historical Inaccuracy, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mage!Q, Mages, Magic, Magical Crime Fighters, Medieval Fantasy AU, Minor Character Death, Shapeshifters - Freeform, knight!Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-16
Updated: 2016-01-16
Packaged: 2018-05-13 21:37:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 36,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5718001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saerus2665/pseuds/Saerus2665
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A year ago if anyone had ever told James Bond he'd be spending his days hunting down magical threats with a scrawny young mage, he would have declared them mad. Yet here he is, covered in goblin innards and not much caring save for the fact that it'll probably take forever to wash off.</p><p>A Historical Fantasy AU in which James Bond is a knight under Lady M of the North and has a job of locating and extinguishing magical threats with his partner, Q, who just wants James to stop stealing his inventions before they're finished. </p><p> </p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [isthisrubble](https://archiveofourown.org/users/isthisrubble/gifts).



> A huge thanks must be given to my artist [isthisrubble](http://isthisrubble.tumblr.com/). She's brilliant not only at art but also as a writer and all her work is just fantastic. She's been such a huge help along the way. 
> 
> Also a huge thanks to my beta, [Waywardhalos](http://headfirstforwaywardhalos.tumblr.com/), who is an absolute peach for putting up with some the absolutely ridiculous mistakes I during the edits of this fic. 
> 
> And definitely a final thanks to MinMu for mod-ing the Reverse Bang this year and making it so much fun!

_You’re broken in the way of lines._

  
_They’re straight splits in the skin; too thin for you, too thin for this job._

  
_A sheen sheer coating, breaking apart, revealing ugly little things like shame, doubt, and loathing._

  
_And you’ve got no band-aids around you, only more knives. You’ve never stopped to wonder why you keep causing these splits yourself._

  
_He’s broken in circles._

  
_Weaving little scars, lapping and repeating. Everything’s a story; everything begins again._

  
_This meeting, it’s happened before._

  
_This conversation, it’s happened before._

  
_This touch, he’s felt it before._

  
_What can you give a man who’s lived his life a thousand times? What can you bring a man who’s every breath seems written into a script on a crumpled page?_

  
_Yourself._

  
_He sees your lines and he presses himself into them. You see his circles and want to trace them. But no one ever told you you’d get dizzy and no one ever warned him that these lines only run parallel._

  
_So that’s what you have then, two chasms of infinity whittled down to weathered souls crossed up in each other, constantly trying to fill a gap inside someone who knows you can’t._

  
_But it’ll never be enough to make them stop letting the other try._

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Ah, Sir Bond”

James walks across the wide space of the main hall, stopping before the lord seated at the large table at the end of the room. He gives a short nod of acknowledgement.

Lord Edward, who was a rather proud man, enjoyed grand flourish in his halls almost, as much as he did his food. The hall was grandiose, decorated with white marble and black granite; white roses sat in high bouquets on the large columns that framed the hall. The lord was sat at the end of a long table with a large banquet of food placed out before him, enough to feed at least ten men. Yet, Edward appeared to have no intention to share it with anyone other than himself.

Bond thought it all a bit… over-dramatic. But he did prefer Edward to some of the others that made up the King’s Council.

“Bond, I’m going to make this quick since I know we both do not want to be here,” he says, using one hand to pull forward a stack of papers, and another to grab a shank of meat from a platter.

”The council is currently in review of Lady M’s ‘project’ as you may have heard. We’re in the process of reviewing all her top operatives, in light of a few incidents that the council may consider “extreme” in terms of costs.“

Bond nods.

“M’s already been in for her review, but the council has decided that it may be best to address some of her lead knights over some of their recent...behavior”

Bond nods again.

“So then, Sir Bond… We’ll start with the most recent incidents… Last month you dismounted a visiting Lord from our neighboring kingdom and stole his horse--”

Bond clears his throat. “To be fair, my lord, there was a satyr out to kill the king.”

Lord Edward raises an eyebrow as he bites into his shank of lamb. “The king is well guarded, Bond,” he points out with his mouth full, “and there were plenty of other horses to steal.”

“Yes, but against satyrs? I’d rather like to think that’s the whole reason our division exists,” Bond replies simply. “Also, in light of the situation, I didn’t find very much time to peruse for available horses”

Lord Edward rolls his eyes, and picks up a different piece of paper. There were a lot of papers. “Does your division also exist to level entire streets of villages?”

“Ah, that one was a mountain troll, sir. It was rather fond of throwing rocks.”

“It wasn’t the rocks that did it. You blew it up. Houses were crushed by disembodied troll parts,” the lord says incredulously.

“Ah, yes,” Bond pauses for a brief second to be fair, that was my Quartermaster, not me.”

“Your partner.” The lord points out.

“As in we work together, yes. He’s still resistant to the idea of being wined and dined.”

Lord Edward shakes his head, clearly exasperated. “Well thank the gods the boy has some sense” Edward says, pursing his lips. “Bond, as a council, all we are asking of you and your superior is to keep the damage to a minimum. The crown has wars to fight, as I’m sure you’re aware of. We cannot keep funding such large reconstruction. Find an alternate way to destroy mountain trolls, and stop making our king look like a fool in front of visiting royalties. It’s really not that much to ask, is it?”

“With all do respect, sir,” Bond says finally, taking a slow step forward. “Our division does what it has to do to keep this kingdom and everyone in it safe…”

Edward gives another largely exasperated sigh and tosses the grape he’d been inspecting back down onto the platter. “Bond, that’s the same damn thing M said to me last week. Did you two rehearse this before you came in!”

Bond recalls the sharp tone of M in the carriage ride over here, berating him for forgetting lines of the speech she’d prepared for him. “No, my Lord.”

Edward just looks at Bond for a long second, before just shaking his head again in defeat. “You listen about as well as everyone else under M’s command. You’re excused.”

Bond leaves feeling unconcerned. The Council could argue all they want but until they could defend themselves against mountain trolls or fairies, then his job was safe.

But Bond does think about the conversation now, as he’s standing next to Q, watching the remaining pack of goblins they’d been fighting continue to run around the market street, screeching in panic, before they each spontaneously combusted one by one.

“To be fair…” Q began once the last one exploded right before them, showering them both in a rain of goblin innards, “I hadn’t known that they’d exploded in sunlight.” The large crystal ball that Q’d levitated in the air in order to produce his spell of artificial sunlight came floating back down towards them. He’d only been meaning to use it as a form of lighting to see the massive amount of goblins that had been stealing from the several shops set up on the market street at night. The shops had now been saved from the local pack of goblins, but were currently splattered in goblin blood and gore, a few of them having been blasted apart by the occasional exploding goblin. Q reaches out and catches the ball as it floats down and shrinks into a smaller size.

“So… problem solved then,” Bond says slowly, looking around at the several shops that were on fire from the explosions of the goblins. Townspeople were starting to crowd the square. The main focus was on putting out the fires, so the retreating forms of Bond and Q goes largely unnoticed.

* * *

 

 

Before joining M’s service as what can only be described as supernatural law enforcement, Bond had been a commander in the king’s army. He’d been largely successful, for the most part, in whatever battles the king had decided to wage against their bordering kingdoms. Many of the battles had been pointless, more for pride than anything, but it was something to do for Bond, to keep his mind and body busy. And he was good at it.

 

So it was surprising that at the end of his contract,which he was fully ready to renew, Bond received news that he was being sent back to the North under special request of its Lady M. Not much information came with the letter, save from the almost cryptic mention of M’s ‘New Front’.

 

He had learned what it meant from Alec.

 

Alec and James’ relationship stems back to their early days in the military, when they were both young men from the sparse north, fascinated by the crown and its conquests and craving that sense of purpose joining the army could bring. They were close; in ways that many came from spending so much time together in the military. It never passed beyond a familiar intimacy with the two of them, but they were very close friends, and they stayed such, even when Alec was moved back to the North to serve with M after a mission gone awry.

 

It hadn’t been Alec’s fault, the mission that landed him back here in the North. But he wound up captured for weeks while one of the king’s enemies did many a terrible thing to him. James had been stationed in the south when all this had happened and while he wasn’t there to see the physical wounds, he knew his friend well enough to recognize the mental ones. Alec wasn’t a particularly emotional man, but James could recognize when he needed another drink, or to be left alone, or to be pulled in to share the same bed, just for the night.  

 

Despite everything, Alec still greets him warmly every time James comes home, and he does so now.

 

“James!” Alec exclaims, a brilliant grin breaking out across his face when he sees his familiar friend coming over a hill a little ways outside of town. “I knew it was only  a matter of time before you decided missing me was too much,”  he teases, riding up next to James and pulling him into a loose hug over the backs of their horses.

 

“I got transferred, Alec,” James clarifies pointedly, but his tone is lacking anything but fondness. He gives Alec a few hearty clap on the back before pulling away.

 

Alec’s grin is still there as he pulls back to look James in the eye. “I like to think it was fate.”

 

“Or a military transfer,” James counters again.

 

Alec hasn’t changed much since the last time James had been back on leave. His hair’s a bit longer, a bit shaggier, and there are a few lines embedded in his face, as there are with James. But there also a gleam of something in his eyes, one that hadn’t been there before, and one that James knows isn’t there entirely just because of Bond’s return. He is curious, but not enough to ask about it now. Instead he follows Alec the rest of the way back into town.

 

“M’s trying this new thing” Alec had said that first night through a mouthful of bread as they ate. Alec’s home was modestly sized for a ex-military knight. It was nice still, just lacking the usual grandeur of a noble home. They ate together at the small table Alec has near his fireplace.

 

Bond had only raised an eyebrow at Alec’s statement and took another bite of food.

 

“She’s inviting in warlocks, like from the East n’ stuff.” Alec wipes the back of his mouth with his hand and James’ brow only arches further. “She’s employing them under the crown. She’s got an idea they may be useful, and some of the things she’s got them working on,” Alec gives a low whistle and lets James snatch the last few pieces of meat of his plate. “She’s even got one employed directly under her. He’s the head of all of them, you’ll probably see all this tomorrow, but…”

 

“Do you trust them?” James asks as he took a thick swing of drink.

 

Alec leans back away from the table into his seat taking a drink from his own glass. “I don’t know yet… but M does, and she’s yet to lead me too terribly astray.” He says over the brim of his cup.

 

Bond feels as though Alec has appropriately summarized his own feelings on the matter.

 

Bond’s initial apprehension did not stem from a hatred of warlocks,  but rather from a lack of knowledge on them. Bond spent years of training, learning the arts of war, but these people weren’t part of that. He preferred the old art, because he understood it. This harnessing of magic, weaponizing it, it was new, brilliant and ingenious, Bond couldn’t deny, but it was also dangerous. Warfare had rules, and these mages broke them…There was a lot of room for distrust.

 

Or so he’d thought.

 

Then he meets Q.

* * *

 

Bond climbs the small stairwell into the foyer of the main gallery, taking the stairs two at a time before reaching large door to the foyer and main hearth place.

 

Where the Southern Noble’s palaces were an extravagant affair with gold and silver trimmings, M’s palace retained a cozier feel. The architects had kept the feel of most northern homes, allowing the palace to fit into at least the similar decor of the lords of the north. There were plenty of exposed wooden beams supporting the high vaulted ceiling above Bond’s head. Intricate wood carvings lined the walls, and the walls also remained closer to together, making the room feel cozier than other wide spacious palaces. 

 

Bond presses the thick heavy wood of the main hall’s doors opened, and enters the most extravagant part of M’s palace. 

 

Flames line the side of the room, burning in Individual torches, a long soft dark green carpet lay spread on the floor, leading up to where M sat, elegant and regal as the queen. 

 

As Bond approaches, he notices another figure next to the throne. A tall whisp of a man, with a nest of dark curly hair atop his head. He is dressed in casual robes, similar to that of Bond’s, but something about the way he held himself, so proud and assured, surprises Bond. Their eyes meet briefly as Bond comes to a stop in front of M’s chair. The other man’s eyes were surprisingly sharp.

 

“Bond,” M says, pulling Bond's attention back. 

 

“M,” Bond returns smoothly, standing from his kneel. “I really do love what you’ve done with the place,” he says in reference to the medium-sized statue of a hound resting near M’s feet.

 

“Your interior decorating skills are always appreciated, Bond.”

 

“Well I do suppose introductions are in order. Bond, this is Q, the new Head Mage of my council. He'll be the main consult to their new group, and will thus be involved in any council meetings concerning this land. Q, this is Bond--”

 

“Whom I’d have to be deaf to not know about,” Q finishes, giving Bond a bright-eyed nod of acknowledgement.

 

Bond returns the nod, taking in the way Q smiles as a note. His face wears something of complacence, acquiesce, but his eyes hold something sharper. It wasn’t anything sinister-- Bond had seen sinister-- but it was something sharp, something bright.

 

“Bond, we’re here to discuss your assignments post-leave from the royal military,” M began again. “I certainly do hope you hadn’t planned to have a lot of downtime.”

 

“I hadn’t dreamed of it,” Bond answers plainly.

 

M nods, pleased but reluctant to show it. She turns back to Q , and gives him a short nod. Q responds by pulling a small glass orb from his sleeve. Bond knows enough about magic to know what it is at first sight. Seeing crystals aren’t particularly rare in themselves; however, finding a mage strong enough to wield one-- those were far and few in between. 

 

Q doesn’t look at Bond or M as he places it on the carpet at his feet and gives it a soft nudge. The ball rolls smoothly towards the end of the first step he and M were on, but before it could fall over the edge onto the next step, it stops, shudders, then rises up into the air, where it is caught in one of the bright rays of morning light coming in from the windows of M’s hall. It doesn’t begin to glow or anything brilliant like Bond had expected; instead, a soft, high-pitched ringing sound fills the air around them. The light from the window reflecting through the crystal casts a circular reflection of light onto the ground between Bond, M and Q. 

 

The circle of light on the floor begins to fill with shapes. They were distorted at first, slowly growing sharper. M begins to speak. “Recently, the King commissioned the north to form a program for a kingdom-wide removal of all magical threats,” M states. “The request was done with the utmost secrecy. The crown will not be tarnished by the implication its armies cannot handle magical threats.” 

 

“Recall the incident with the Dragon a couple of months back” Q says. The light projecting from the crystal ball  sharpens into definable shapes. It forms into a landscape burning with the last dying embers of fire. Bond glances back up to Q, who is watching Bond intently. Bond nods. He recalls that incident clearly. 

 

The North is notorious for its more than usual dealings with magic, but a dragon is rare in itself. While the dragon that attacked had been an adolescent, it had caused a great deal of damage to a very populous town in one of the most southern parts of the North before anyone could manage to figure out a plan to deal with it. It wrecked havoc for a week, killing the small brigades locals had sent to defeat it. M sent a squadron capable of defeating it as soon as she’d heard, but dispatched from the northernmost part of the North, the squadron had taken three days to appear, they arrived to a scorched city devoid of any life, the dragon nowhere to be seen. Bond had heard about it from gossip in the front lines; a few of his comrades from the village had been given leave to deal with the loss.

 

In the very far north, past land and seasonal foliage, Bond knew dragons thrived, but one coming so far south had been surprising, if not devastating. And it emphasized the point that the kingdom was weak against these threats. 

 

“Obviously, the kingdom gravely failed its people that day,” Q concludes.  “If our enemies were to take advantage of this weakness, somehow use magic against us, the crown would be left very vulnerable, to say the least.”

 

“Which is why the king had commissioned the North to become its central magical intelligence center,” M stated. “We’ve employed several of the army's knights, including your friend Trevelyan. The first step into dealing with threats of magic is to understand it.” That finally explained the employment of Q, and the other warlocks Alec had mentioned. Bond takes this all in stride, not too surprised, but still quite apprehensive. 

 

M continues, “The goal of this initiative, is to learn how to settle magical threats, develop weapons against these threats, while also learning more about the magical world around us. Q will be taking a role of Quartermaster. He’s smart with both human weapons and magic and believes an equilibrium between the two is obtainable. He will accompany you on your missions in order to learn the nature of both your combat skills and that of the beasts you will be combatting.” 

 


	2. Chapter 2

Bond and Q both make it back to M’s palace by the time the sun is rising. They were both still covered in goblin matter, so they had to avoid running into M’s palace workers to keep from starting up the rumor mill again as to what’s really going on behind M’s castle doors. 

 

“How long have you been practicing magic now?” Bond asks casually, following Q down the hallway to the bathing house in M’s castle. “And you still haven’t figured out a spell to get rid of blood quicker?” 

 

“Heaven forbid you have to actually use something that’s not magic, Bond,” Q replies. He holds out the door to the bathhouse for Bond as they both slip inside. “I think you’ve become spoiled.” Q tugs his blood-stained tunic off over his head.

 

Bond pulls the rope to start filling the bath before he too starts undressing. “I think maybe you’ve just started getting lazy.” 

 

“Just because I won’t make you that exploding quill,” Q says, affronted, giving Bond a mock stern look before he slips into the bath water. “Honestly, Bond, you’re a child.”  The steam in the room is thick, but not thick enough to obscure the entire form of Q climbing into the tub. 

 

“The quill has nothing to do with this,” Bond protests, following Q into the water.

 

“The quill always has something to do with it. I’m supposed to be allocating my skills and M’s funds into developing weapons against supernatural threats. Not only would it be highly volatile, but it would serve just absolutely no purpose whatsoever against anything we’ve fought.”

 

“It’s the element of surprise, Q,” Bond reasons, focusing intently on washing the blood off of his neck and body, and trying to ignore the almost overwhelming presence of Q next to him doing the same.

 

“Yes, I imagine quite a few creatures would be surprised to see one of M’s knights blow up right before him due to an exploding quill,” Q states flatly.

 

There’s a long moment of silence. Bond catches a glimpse of Q’s slim form ducking underneath the water, trying to get the blood out of his hair.

 

“...what about an exploding ring,” Bond asks as soon as Q resurfaces.

 

“Bond!”

* * *

 

There’s a steep, narrow, spiral staircase that leads underneath the west wing of the castle. Following the instatement of the program, M had converted their former dungeons and slave quarters into an area Q  his mages could utilize as an office space. 

There is a main gallery, filled with worktables and desks for the mages under Q. There’s a wide row of shelves filled with various bottles of potions and extracts lining the walls. There’s no one here now. It’s probably too early for a lot of them to be here. Q’s workshop was at the far end of the main gallery. There’s a heavy wooden door with a distinct lack of any keyhole in front of it. 

Q reaches out and places his palm against the door. It happens very abruptly: Q touches the wood, and then suddenly the door isn’t there anymore. There’s no sign of wood anywhere until Bond follows Q through it. When he turns back around, the door is there. 

“It’s a simply rune spell,” Q explained the first time Bond had witnessed it. Q had stood next to him and watched Bond reached out to touch the wood curiously. It had felt a little warm beneath his fingers, but that’s the only discernable difference he can detect.  “The runes create a field, with a little bit of tweaking you can...modify sort of, what structure the field reflects. All you really need to know is the make-up of wood...and projecting runes.”

Bond thought about all the small job mages he’d come across in his life, from hired henchmen to simple shop owners; never had he thought magic could be such a...delicate art. Over the past few months, it’s grown obvious to Bond how much time Q had spent studying this. Q never spoke about his past, always quickly and skillfully changing the topic when it came up. Bond assumes that he must’ve had a near equally brilliant mentor. But mages weren’t the most common, one that openly took apprentices even less so. A parent then, perhaps, most likely a mother. Bond knew females mages tended to be stronger than males. 

Bond follows Q away from the door, down a damp corridor that leads away from the main gallery in his private office. Bond suspects this must’ve been some sort of cooks’ quarters, or guard’s lodgings at a time when the North kept their own prisoners in the castle. The holdings cells have long been empty, save for one or two cells in the northern part of the castle. The room has now been cleared of anything from its old life, and now instead plays host to a myriad of machines, multiple cupboards stacked tall with books, and various vials of potion storage. At the far end of the room there’s a compact doorway to the small antechamber reinforced with spells that allows Q to test his minor explosives in.  

There are two separate desks in the room, parallel to each other with a shelf of books in between. One of them is technically supposed to be Bond’s but Q’s allocated it for his own use, citing that  _ Bond doesn’t even do his own mission reports so why the hell would he need a desk?  _

Q used to seem a little self-conscious about it all, with the large amount of clutter and unusual projects. But now he’s grown used to Bond being down here. There’s a new model of a modified catapult in the near center of the room that Q must’ve began when Bond was on a different mission with Alec. Upon closer inspection, Bond can make out dark marks in charcoal along the wood, little notes Q’s written to himself about the design of it.

That’s when something shiny on the table catches Bond’s eye. On the desk that’s technically his, on top of several stacks of paper and surrounded by several unidentifiable instruments, lay a sword, fine as any Bond’d seen in the military, except that...Bond reaches out to touch the blade. 

“Bond, no. Stop it,” Q says sharply, abruptly appearing at his side to swat Bond’s hand away.

“What is it?” Bond asks, because it doesn’t look anything special, save that it’s unusually bright…

“It’s silver…,” Q admits. He sounds a bit reluctant, glancing over at the door to make sure it was shut, and Bond can see why. Silver’s for the richest of the rich, and to have a whole sword made out of it... 

“It’s tempered into a lightweight, yet extremely accurate blade” Q continues with a growing sense of pride. “It’ll be easier to combat Weres and other fairie-born creatures. Silver is more effective to them than iron, but I’m trying to…” Q gives an abortive gesture that comes off as oddly self-conscious as he continues.  “Make it a bit more useful against other things, like vampires, which are only vulnerable to a few things. Nasty creatures those are,”  Q finishes in a breath then turns fully away from the sword to face Bond. “Do not touch it,” he says in a tone that fully implies that he knows Bond was fully intending to touch it as soon as he turned around. 

Q  walks away then to disappear behind his desk again, shuffling through one of the drawers.

“Leave it alone, Bond,” Q snaps, still out of sight, just as Bond goes to touch it again. 

The next couple days following the goblin incident, Q and Bond are confined to the office under order from M’s second-in-command, Tanner, to at least  _ try _ to falsify a report that’s believable enough to send to the council to justify to the damage done by the exploding goblins.

It ends up driving both of them mad because Tanner, M’s advisor and overseer,  keeps sending their reports back to them with corrections like “not physically possible” and “Q, I know even magic cannot do this” and “Bond, telling them that Q created an exploding quill for you will not win us any favors in this or the upcoming budget review”. Bond gets in trouble with both Tanner and Q for that one. But Q really doesn’t have a lot of room to scold him because the next day his report gets sent back with the note: “No one’s going to believe goblins ritualistically set themselves ablaze”. 

Bond’s sprawled across the thin couch in Q’s office, in the midst of another rather detailed story that this time involves conveniently timed lightning, when there’s the distinct sound of something coming down the message chute.

Q bolts from where he was sat reading over Tanner’s latest, arguably unreasonably, scathing comments on his own report. Bond sits up from the couch,too, watching as Q unpacks the scroll that came through the chute. 

“M’s given us another mission assignment,” Q says, probably a tad too excitedly, but they have been holed up here for the past two days. He walks over and offers the folded paper up for Bond to take. “I’m to equip and accompany you, for backup and apparently recon.”

“So It’s something new then?” He asks because usually the mages only go out into the field on the first few encounters, to learn and develop weapons against things. After that, Bond or Alec or any of the other 9 knights M has under her get sent out, sort of as guinea pigs, to work with the newly developed weapons.  “Werewolves?” Bond asks after reading the assignment from M. 

Q nods, and pushes away from where he was leaning against the couch, his expression a bit thoughtful. “They’re usually a pretty calm bunch, but every so often an idiot gets turned and he starts turning other and you come up with a nasty bunch trying to take over the the countryside.” 

He goes to the large cupboard pushed opposite the room from them and pulls open the thick wooden doors at its front.  There’s an unorganized mess of things inside. He shuffles through them for a while. 

“So we’re taking care of a feral pack.” Bond refolds M’s letter and pockets it before joining Q at the supply cabinet. “Sounds delightful.”

“Here then. Werewolf readiness pack.” Q shows Bond a small vial filled with a thick, dark green poultice. “There’s this: It’s plant mixture, it’ll disguise your scent to anything, with just a little dab.” 

Bond watches Q pull the cork out of the poultice and dab a bit of the viscous mixture onto his wrist. Bond nods and takes the vial when Q hands it to him. He gives it an experimental sniff. It smells like nothing, which he guesses is the point. 

“A silver-tipped dagger,” Q passes it to Bond after briefly unsheathing it to examine the blade. “It’s only tipped with silver, so it won’t kill them instantly unless you get it into the heart, but it will poison and burn pretty badly.” 

Then Q picks up a medium sized leather bag and tugs the strings apart, opening it up to show to Bond. “And this-- Mountain Ash. It works on a myriad of faerie creatures, as you know, but especially werewolves. If you’re ever in a situation you need to escape, a circle of this and they can’t touch you.” 

Bond apprehensively takes the pouch, examining the dusty black ash with a skeptical look before tying it to his belt too. 

“And for you?” Bond asks, looking around the room. While Q usually didn’t bring things along on their missions, the idea of werewolves seemed infinitely more dangerous than small goblins. He’d heard the tales of some of the creatures gone wrong and had seen pictures in Q’s books. This didn’t seem like something Q should be unprepared for. “You can’t really be expecting to face off against feral werewolves with nothing but your magic.”

Q looks at him oddly for a second. “I imagine I’ll be fairly okay, Bond…,” he says slowly.

Bond feels something akin to worry churn for a bit in the pit of his stomach before he clamps down on it. Q does know more about these creatures than Bond does, and he’s proven himself more than capable countless times in their many dangerous endeavors. 

Bond nods, still with a sinking feeling of apprehension. He doesn’t let it show, however. He just moves out of the way when Q makes his way past him to the other side of the room, where there’s another bureau filled with different jars containing different things. Q picks up a jar full of a murky liquid with bits floating in it. 

“You’ll need to drink this, too.”

Bond picks takes the jar gingerly from Q. Unlike the other things, he feels a strong sense of wariness at the thought of ingesting the liquid in the jar before him. He feels Q’s eyes on him as he examines the jar’s contents and gives it an experimental swirl. 

“What...is it?” Bond asks slowly, because he doesn’t want to put it outright that he won’t drink it, but he also hasn’t made his living drinking everything people handed him.

“It’s a type of potion; a mixture of wolfsbane. It works in your blood. I’m not willing to risk your life on the hope you  _ don’t _ get bitten during this excursion,” Q watches him closely even as Bond sets the jar slowly back down on the table. 

“That looks like it’ll taste horrid,” Bond says plainly. “I’ll pass.”

“Because you don’t trust me?” Q asks, taking the jar back. “Bond, I’m hurt,” Q says, sounding decisively not hurt. 

“I trust you,” Bond replies honestly. 

“You don’t trust magic then?” Q says, tilting his head just slightly. His eyes narrow just a bit; he’s not upset, just...curious. 

Bond recalls a scalding taste at the back of his throat and agony tearing through his bones and he just shakes his head. “Not enough to drink it, no.”

Q gives him another hard look, his eyes skittering around Bond’s features for at least half a minute before he sighs. “The biggest threat about them, at least to you now, will be their saliva. If it enters your skin, you get the virus, then you go through the whole unpleasant process of becoming an involuntary shapeshifter.” 

“I’ll try to be careful, then.” 

Q rolls his eyes, exasperated, before he gestures towards the paper from M that Bond still held. “The threatening pack is a day’s ride north, in Ryn. Do you know of it?”

“I’m familiar with it,” Bond replies.

Q nods. “Good. Then there’s not too much to get done before then, I suppose. Here,” Q hands him a small stack of papers scrawled with a thin compact handwriting. “It’s a draw up of different things you need to know about werewolves.” Q reaches out and slides the top two pages to the bottom of the stack. “There’s also a mark-up of our plan upon arrival. I’ve consulted M with it, but there’s room for change if you have any particular tweaks you’d like to suggest otherwise.” 

Q spreads out his arms in an encompassing gesture and takes a step back away from Bond.

Bond stands there, taking everything mercifully in stride, but with a thin layer of unease. He’s got a plan, a dagger, and a bag of ash. How much more prepared could he be?

_______________________________

Q and Bond leave the following morning, before the sun rises. 

The ride will take at least a day. They’ll reach Ryn around sunset, and then stay the night in an inn until late in the night when the werewolves were out at their peak. The moon is full tonight, creating an urge in pack to be close. Their senses would be blinded by the moon. They’d be purely subjected to their instincts. Q and Bond would have to time their strike in order to reach the wolves at their peak, but also stop them before the town slaughter could go any further. 

Q isn’t a horrible conversationalist. He has tales, and he listens to the ones Bond has, laughing when prompted. Q relaxes brilliantly when they ride side by side down the highroads. Bond had learned many things about Q on trips like these. For example, Q  doesn’t like being called a witch. It’s a common and acceptable phrase when it refers to a female magic user. But it meant something different when referring to male warlocks, something with more offense. 

Q also had a perplexing tattoo on the back of his hand. The first time Bond had seen it,  Q didn’t say anything about; he just caught Bond looking at it, and had refused to talk or meet Bond’s gaze for several long seconds after. He found it later to be Q’s mark of a warlock, required by the king to be visible to the public. Q had shown it to him finally though a bit reluctantly on their way home from a mission, one of their firsts, where the trust between them was still thin and ameable. 

Q’s childhood still remained something of a mystery, despite their increasing closeness and proximity over their time together. Bond’s suspicion that Q had learned his extraordinary understanding of magic through a parent or a teacher proved to be incorrect as Q stated once that he taught himself everything he knew.  It was the fact that he added the phrase ‘I had to’ to the end of that that had piqued Bond’s interest. 

As the time they spent together grew, Bond also found out that there is little about himself that Q didn’t know, which really wasn’t all that surprising. If Q is working as closely with M as he is, then he is bound to have been de-briefed on all of M’s new agents that he is meant to equip. But even then, Q only acknowledges the parts of Bond’s past Bond brings up himself. He seems apprehensive about it. Q is more willing to let Bond bring up his own information himself rather than spell it all out for him. It is a surprising turn from the military, where all the moments of one's’ life were an asset or a weakness. It was something different.

 

The village of Ryn is in desolation. Not physically, as it would have been if it were dragons instead of werewolves invading the town, but the people that live there were wearing  such desolate expressions, filled with grief and fear. There’s anger and distrust simmering below the surface of everything as Bond and Q move through the streets. Thirteen people were killed by the wolf pack and it was a lot of people for a village like Ryn to lose, and only in a matter of days. They were scared, and to thirteen families, their lords had failed them. 

Bond takes the thought in stride. He does move to ride in front of Q, however, as they go down the narrow streets. As soon as they began entering the city, Q’d become increasingly reclusive into his cloak and hood, and Bond could understand why. Warlocks weren’t the most welcome beings, especially in the north. Though many of them were friendly, the mindsets of the past still lingered strongly here; ideas that magic was bad and sinful. Even half a century ago, Q would’ve been pulled from his horse and burned at the stake the instant the town learned of his nature. 

Still, Q holds his head confident as he dismounts outside of the small inn on the outskirts of the village. The sign for it sings in the chilly northern air above head. The sun was finishing with its last dying legs when they duck inside. There is already an assortment of men in the taverns. The innkeeper returns to his podium at the front as the door behind Bond and Q closes. Bond instinctively begins to scan their surrounding in the inn while Q approaches the desk.

“Two rooms please, for the night.”  The clink of shillings set on the podium between them tell Bond that Q’s paying the keeper more than he strictly needs to, most likely for the confidentiality if he happens to notice the two of them leaving tonight. 

But there’s a pregnant pause, which catches Bond’s full attention again.  The innkeeper stares  down at Q’s money for another long second, obviously conflicted, before he slides the pile of shillings gingerly back to Q. Bond can clearly see the mark on the back of Q’s hand, and so can the innkeeper. 

“We don’t board witches here. Try another.” He’s trying to be polite about it. It’s not working. Q remains blissfully cool as he simply takes a small step back, if only to allow room for Bond to come to stand next to him, and this really shouldn’t be as routine for them as it is. 

“Sir, may I introduce you to Sir Bond, former Commander of His Majesty’s Royal Military and trusted Knight to Lady M of the North.”

Bond steps closer so he’s shoulder to shoulder with Q and looming over the innkeeper, the hardest expression set across his face. 

The innkeeper  recognizes James. His expression shifts to one of instant surprise. James grew up in these parts, and becoming a commander in the king’s army wasn't the smallest of feats, especially out of the sparse lands of the north -- that, and the fact that Bond’s family wasn't the most quaint. Bond’s father had been a Lord in the North before his death. Q’s introduction most likely wasn’t even necessary. Judging by Q’s tone, only Bond could tell he was being slightly mocking about it. 

“Lord Bond,” the man stutteres out, panicked as he glances back at Q, who has yet to say anything else, then back to Bond. “Of course, sir, the finest two. They’re just both up the staircase.” The man hands Bond two sets of keys. 

Bond nods in thanks. 

“We will also need board for the horses.” Q says points out. 

“Yes, of course Sir, right away.”

Bond hides his smirk until he’s following Q up the stairs. 

“Well,  _ Lord _ Bond,” Q says with a grin once they’ve reached their rooms. “I’ll come get you closer to the time?” He holds out his hand for the key. Bond deposits it into his hand, then promptly jumps when Q jerks back and hisses sharply in pain. 

“Fucking christ. That’s iron. Shit.” Q swears. Bond really should be getting used to this by now. He’s pretty sure 90% of Q’s injuries on their past missions have been a result of him unconsciously touching iron.

Q places his burnt fingers into his mouth and gives Bond a sharp glare. Bond gives him an apologetic look in return before pulling out a spare cloth and using it to pick up the dropped key before handing it over to Q, cloth between his skin and the metal. 

“You’re getting plenty of practice with this,” Q says when he catches Bond’s look. “You’d think that eventually you’d remember.” His expression is pointed, but his tone remains lighthearted. He isn’t upset. 

“Is your hand going to be okay?” Bond asks, because Q usually is but Bond does feel maybe the slightest bit guilty about having forgotten again. 

Q pushes open the door to his room before pulling his hands back and inspecting it. There’s a bright red burn mark, but it’s nothing too serious. There isn’t even a blister. “I think I have some salve for it. I may yet live, Bond.” Q drops his hand and looks up at Bond. “ Don’t do it again though, or you may just wind up fighting fairies with a wooden sword.”

Bond grins. “It depends on what kind of wood, doesn’t it? If I remember correctly, fae kind are particularly weak against--”

“Ah! No. Bond!” Q throws his hands up “It’s weird. Stop. It’s weird that you actually bothered to read those texts. Alec almost ‘accidentally’ set them on fire.”

“I like to know what I’m up against,” Bond says with a one-shoulder shrug. And it’s true, he did. But he could also tell that each page on each creature was painstakingly summarized by Q with everything he knew about it, so maybe the fact Q’d put so much effort into trying to keep them safe had contributed something to the hours it had taken Bond to read the entire pamphlet all the way through, in-depth. 

Q gives Bond an almost scrutinizing look, before he just rolls his eyes. “Goodnight Bond, try to get some sleep before we head out.”

Bond nods. “Goodnight Q”


	3. Chapter 3

Bond wakes with a jolt and the bitter taste of seawater filling his mouth and Q sitting next to him in a chair, leaning over him. His face filled Bond’s vision. 

 

He tells himself that it’s the army had conditioned him enough to not immediately attack Q, despite the instinctive itch in his fingertips and fear welling inside his stomach. But in truth, it may just be that he’s grown used to Q; that he trusts him. Bond pushes out the thought. Instead he sits up slowly, and glances at the door. The room’s illuminated solely by moonlight, which means that it must be close to their time to go. 

 

“They don’t really make locks against mages yet,” Q says simply when he notices Bond scrutinizing the door. “Bad dream?”

 

“Regular dream” Bond answers, rubbing the sleep from his face. Q offers him a flask of water, which Bond takes and drinks gratefully. It’s only after he polishes off the remainder of the flask that he realizes it has a sharp herbal taste to it. 

 

“Energizing plants, nothing too fancy. It’s like coffee, almost. It was the only water I had on me.”  

 

Bond hands the empty flask back to Q with a nod of thanks, then climbs out of the bed.

 

* * *

 

Bond watches Q stare horrified as the werewolf before them leaps forward with a loud snarl, quickly closing the space between them. The glow around Q’s hands flicker. Bond’s seen Q cast enough to know the spell needs more time, it’s not going to work fast enough. Bond grabs Q’s shoulder and pulls him hard backwards before turning to face the approaching hound. There’s a sharp graze of canines on his forearm before Bond can come down with his other hand and slash the wolf across the chest at the very last possible second. Q behind him gives a sharp cry of dismay, knowing full well that a simple blade would do very little against a full moon-crazed werewolf, but he’s abruptly cut off as the wolf falls heavily to the ground, convulsing. 

 

They’d walked right into a trap. Q realized it first, as they’d been walking through the thin patch of woods on the outskirts of the city. The scent-masking poultice could only do so little against a pack that was out to kill anything it could sense. They must’ve been in town when Bond and Q left, and hunted them into the woods. Eventually, in a large clearing in the woods, Q, in a stroke of usual genius, had used a detection spell that ricocheted off of anything with energy, sending him back the exact location of Bond, and also of an entire pack of werewolves, closing in fast, in a killing formation.

 

Q  scrambles up behind him, grabbing Bond’s shoulder and yanking him aside a bit to look at the wolf presently seizing on the ground, then back at Bond, then down to his sword, which up until now hadn’t looked familiar. But now that he was really looking at it, it seemed awfully bright in the moonlight. 

 

“Fuck’s sake Bond, that wasn’t even finished and you’ve gone and nicked it,” Q says, swatting Bond’s shoulder disapprovingly.

 

“You’re welcome, Q,” Bond says pointedly, before having to drag Q behind him again as another wolf charges them. Bond cuts it down as easy as he does the first. 

 

“Bond, if you keep manhandling me, I’m not going to be able to finish this spell,” Q snaps when Bond shoves him again for the third time. Bond ignores him as he cuts down a third wolf. That first wolf had gotten too close to both of them for Bond’s comfort, and he wasn’t about to lose his Quartermaster to a pack of feral assholes. 

 

“Bond, I  _ can _ protect myself, you know,” Q grumbles behind him, making Bond realize he may have been saying things out loud as he fought against the snapping jaws of the next wolf. The silver blade worked like a dream, paralyzing the wolves with just a scratch, but there were a lot, and it was late, and this was really growing tedious. 

 

Q was doing something behind him. He could tell because there was a bright glow, brighter than the moonlight, but he didn’t know what it was until a shower of what appeared to be ash fell past his line of vision, settling in a perfect circle on the ground. The next wolf snarls loudly as it slams heavily into the barrier created by the ash. Q wastes no time, quickly pulling Bond’s sword out of his hand by the leather wrapped handle, before pressing one of the silver tipped daggers he’d shown Bond in the office into Bond’s. 

 

“The one of the left, four o’clock,” Q mumbles quietly into his ear before he moves away from Bond, still holding his sword.  Bond doesn’t take a second to think before he hurls the dagger, which he notices was the source of the odd illumination from earlier, at the werewolf Q’d pointed out. 

 

The dagger strikes its mark square in the heart. There is a sharp yelp of pain from the wolf, but it doesn’t topple over immediately like Bond had expected, or explode like he had maybe hoped.

 

He mumbles as much to Q, who swats him on the shoulder in return. “If you don’t recall, it took us forever to get the last thing we blew up off of us.”

 

A silvery blue network of threads appears, stemming out from the dagger in the wolf’s chest to the chests of the nine others still attempting to attack Q and Bond through the barrier of ash. Bond comes to the realization that Q’d had him target the alpha. 

 

Bond watches incredulously. He turns back to Q just as the mage lifts his hand, and then drops it. Bond could feel the snap of the threads in the air, followed immediately by a chorus of painful howls. 

 

Bond watches as the wolves turn on themselves, loyalties forgotten amidst the throws of the full moon and a newly broken pack bond. 

 

They manage to tear themselves to pieces. There’s only one standing at the end of it, before it’s subsequently silenced by Bond’s blade as he and Q stepped out from the ring of ash. 

 

“Mountain ash and simple circular spell,” Q explains when he sees Bond looking back at their ring of ash.

 

“Is that all of them?” Bond asks, turning to stare at the bloodbath they stood in the center of. 

 

Q nods, looking around incredulously as well.  “Yeah, with the connection,” he explains, “ I could feel all of them.” He gives an dismissive hand gesture. He’s a bit shaken, probably from having stared into the snapping jaws of an attacking werewolf no less that ten minutes ago.

 

He bears his displeasure admirably, but Bond could tell he was bothered by the sheer amount of gore around him. The fact that it could have been prevented had the wolf pack not turned feral is also a heavy weight in the air.

 

Bond wanders back to the fallen body of the alpha and removes his blade from its chest, inspecting the knife closely. “It’s fine to use again?” he asks in effort to take Q’s mind off of everything. Q’s always proud when his inventions and spells work out correctly, and this one had performed brilliantly. 

 

Q nods, coming up behind him, a familiar gleam returning to his eyes, and he takes the knife, inspecting it. “The spell on it wore off once I broke the connection.” He catches the curious look on Bond’s face and offers an explanation. 

 

“Pack connections are strong, even with savage wolves. I just had to create a spell that acted as a poison of sorts, that was able to tap into that connection, highlight it, and then make it a physical structure tied to myself. Then it’s short physical magic, and all I had to do then was break it.”

 

Bond couldn’t help but stare at the brilliant young warlock for a short couple of seconds, imagining that that spell was infinitely harder than what Q just made it sound like.  

 

Then Bond registers the sharp twinge of pain in his forearm. “Shit!” He swears, dropping his sword to inspect the wound. It’s light, but it’s still a puncture wound in the skin of his forearm.  Panic begins to swell up in his chest. 

 

He’s been poisoned before. He knows he should calm himself, breathe deeper; anything to try to slow the poison -- but it’s wolf’s venom, Bond reminds himself, and there isn’t a cure.  _ Dammit. _

 

“Oh, you got bitten…,” Q’s voice is soft, nonchalant, as he wafts into Bond’s line of vision, appearing way too calm for this sort of situation. He stands next to Bond, inspecting the wound with a bored expression before giving Bond an equally bored look. Bond looks up at him, ready to be angry. 

 

“Suppose it’s a good thing I slipped that potion to you earlier at the inn.”

 

Bond recalls the sharp taste of herbs in the water he drank after he’d woken up. 

 

Bond drops his hand and looks at Q incredulouslybecause of course he did, that clever bastard…

 

“You should still probably get that wrapped,” Q says, nodding to the wound that’s starting to drip blood down his arm. 

 

Bond grunts and shoulders his pack which he’d dropped earlier, trying and failing not to smile a bit at his Quartermaster.

 

 

* * *

M’s satisfied with their report, though she doesn’t show an ounce of it on her face. One had to be rather gifted in reading M to know when she was upset or pleased. And she is pleased now, as Q reports the details of their mission,  his crystal hanging in the air between him and Bond and M’s throne, images of the werewolves reflecting onto the ground. It shows Bond striking the first wolf with his sword, and how it had promptly fell seizing to the ground. 

 

“It’s seems as though the full silver makeup of the sword works infinitely faster and more effective than silver, gilded weaponry. It’d obviously be ineffective to mass produce silver as weaponry, but I am working with similar metals to see how the blood reacts to them as well” 

 

M hums in approval. “Bloody well done, Quartermaster. Keep me updated on any other developments.” Q nods in thanks.  

 

“You are free to go.”

 

Q gives a short formal bow before plucking his crystal out of the air and exiting the hall. M waits until the door closes behind him to address Bond.

 

“Bond. How is working with the Quartermaster in the field?” She had obviously known the concerns James had had when he first learned Q would be partnering up with him, a couple months ago; how could someone as whip thin as Q possibly stand a chance against the plethora of magical threats the kingdom faced on a basis? Bond could see her smugness in the slightest tilt of her lip.

 

“He’s proven himself more than capable; brilliant, even, at his work,” Bond responds honestly. He can concede the point that Q is fucking brilliant at his job. He’d probably receive quite a lot of recognition through the kingdom if M’s whole initiative wasn’t operating under high secrecy, or maybe if  Q didn’t have almost as much of an affinity for blowing things up as Bond did. 

 

“Good then,” M hums, sounding pleased. “Then you two can remain partners until further notice.” 

 

Bond nods, pleased, and exits the hall.

* * *

 

 

“You know she’s tried this before,” Alec says to Bond over a pint. They’re in the tavern, with Q pressed in close to Bond, and another one of M’s mages, Eve, sitting next to Alec. It’s hot inside from all the bodies pressed in close, but he and Q are pressed close enough he can feel the hard line of Q’s body against his side. Q’s cheeks are pinked from the heat and the alcohol.

 

“She’s mentioned it before, but I’ve never heard much about it,” Q adds as he leans in, unintentionally pressing closer into Bond, intrigued.

 

“Tried what before?” James asks, looking between Alec and Q through the dim lighting in the corner of the bar. Alec looks tired, but his eyes were shining bright with an excitement that nowadays seemed to always be there. 

 

He and Eve had just recently returned from one of their own assignments. Eve played more of a secretary to M than Q’s job as a Quartermaster, looking over mission assignments and recommending the best ways to deal with each threat, then examining the execution of her plans occasionally with Alec or one of the other knights M employed.

 

Eve turns her attention back to them from where she was briefly distracted by a small scuffle towards the entrance. She doesn't like being in close proximity to other people like this, Bond can tell. Q doesn’t like it either, but he shows it less. One really had to be skilled to be able to pick up on the subtle shifts in his posture and expression when the sounds get too loud. 

 

“She’s tried this initiative...you know, with the mages,” Bond glances around to make sure no one is listening. M’s division is still greatly hidden from the public. “It was ten years ago, when she was Lady of Mereland and her father was in the North,” Alec continues.

 

“They tried to do something similar by employing mages under the crown and using them for work,” Eve adds, leaning in, “but apparently one of them was too irrational and too brash, so they scrapped the whole program under the king’s order.”

 

“If they scrapped the program something must’ve happened then,” Bond muses, because he and Q managed to level a whole street of a town in one day, and they were still employed. “Is the mage still around?”

 

Both Eve and Alec shake their heads. 

 

“I saw the files. M kept no mention him at all,” Eve explains. “I was sorting through them a while ago. He just sort of disappeared.” 

 

Q takes another drink of his pint, polishing off the last of it. “I bet he’ll come up sooner or later. No one that powerful just disappears. It’ll be a pain in the ass for all of us, I bet,” he says with a bitter sigh. Bond has to admit that he’s right.

* * *

 


	4. Chapter 4

“So, Q, shapeshifters… what’s their deal?”

 

Alec snorts out a laugh from his spot next to Bond without looking up from whatever he’s writing. Q does look up at him from behind his desk to where both Bond and Alec are sitting on the couch across the room of his shop. Bond has an arm over the back of the couch, propped up just enough to look over the back at Q across the room.

 

Q’s working on the potion to coat the new sword -- which he still stubbornly refuses to call ‘Bond’s’ despite the fact he hasn’t demanded it back yet -- that will apparently help it against vampires and other creatures that can't be felled with just silver. Or at least that’s what he’s trying to do; Bond’s a bit of a nuisance when bored. 

 

“If you mean the actual process of shapeshifting, Bond, there’s a book about it in that case,” Q says, pointing with a feather pen to the small book case near the door to Q’s shop. 

 

Bond hold the book he’s been reading up. “This one?”

 

Q looks briefly surprised, but then his face settles into exasperation. “Yes, that one. What was your question, then?”

 

“It says here that shapeshifters can only shift safely to one alternate form. But I recall something in your bestiary about shifters than can change multiple times...” 

 

“Well, yes,” Q says simply. Alec sets down his quill to listen.  “But metamorphmagi are only natural phenomena,” Q continues to work as he speaks. “Shapeshifters are created by the shifter themselves. It’s a tricky process. It splits the soul into two different forms, but that’s the extent one can split himself. Each shapeshifter can only have one form it shifts too, otherwise their minds cannot stabilize between the multiple forms.” 

 

“So basically, you have to pick one and stick with it?” Alec muses, looking at James.

 

“Basically, yes. Most of us go for something useful, like deer or birds,”  Q says, reaching forward to scribble something down in his journal before going back to his work. “But sometimes people get ambitious and go for things like Gryphons or Phoenixes.”

 

“Can people do that? Shift into other magical beings?” Bond questions.

 

“It’s hard,” Q says and thinks for a second. Bond can’t tell if it’s about his question or his potion. Eventually, he says, “I’ve never seen the spells to do it. Shifting into regular creatures is easier because you’re still your own soul inside a different form. To change into a magical being, you’d have to alter your magic… It’d be a tedious process, if at all possible. Not something I’d be particularly interested in researching.”

 

Bond rolls that around in his head for a bit, thinking. Then he says, “So for the shift, you just need the essence of the animal?”

 

Q laughs then, a quiet chuckle as he swirls something around in the jar he’s holding. “If only it were that easy. You do need some sort of essence from your target form, yes, but it’s a three-month process of potion brewing and exercise training, not to mention the actual practicing of the shift.” 

 

“So what’s yours then?” Alec pipes in from the other side of the couch, turning and sitting up a bit more so he can cross his arms over the back of the couch. James turns to see his crooked grin. “A bird?”

 

Q looks up at him. “You’d like to think so, wouldn’t you?”

 

“It’s a small cat, isn’t it,” Alec continues, “messy black coat, probably.”

 

Q rolls his eyes. “Alec, do you want working weapons in the field, or would you rather go with a bread knife?” Q asks, trying to sound serious and utterly failing. 

 

Bond laughs and lays back down on the couch, picking up his book again. Alec does similarly, going back to writing up his latest mission report, letting Q gets back to work. 

 

* * *

  
  


Q’s sword works brilliantly against the nest of vampires they’re fighting. 

 

“A mixture of garlic and moonflower. It’s also coating the inside of your scabbard so you only need to resheath when you get a chance,” Q had said when he returned the finished sword to Bond.

 

Alec and Eve are with them too. Alec’s got set of arrows coated with the same potion as James’ sword, courtesy of Q. Though Alec’s still been eyeing James’ sword all night. 

 

The whole event is pretty tedious, saying the least. Q’s potion turns the vampires into stone as soon as it enters the bloodstream, fast-acting and lethal. The vampires themselves are young and inexperienced, a product of someone once again trying to build an army with their newfound power. Except that it’s a really small army and none of them particularly know how to fight, and James would feel almost bad killing them if they hadn’t passed what could be described as their ‘Blood-room’, where they’d been killing nearby humans for food. Even he’d been struck by the sheer amount of gore splattering the wall.

Q’s sword works brilliantly against the nest of vampires they’re fighting. 

“A mixture of garlic and moonflower. It’s also coating the inside of your scabbard so you only need to resheath when you get a chance,” Q had said when he returned the finished sword to Bond.

Alec and Eve are with them too. Alec’s got set of arrows coated with the same potion as James’ sword, courtesy of Q. Though Alec’s still been eyeing James’ sword all night. 

The whole event is pretty tedious, saying the least. Q’s potion turns the vampires into stone as soon as it enters the bloodstream, fast-acting and lethal. The vampires themselves are young and inexperienced, a product of someone once again trying to build an army with their newfound power. Except that it’s a really small army and none of them particularly know how to fight, and James would feel almost bad killing them if they hadn’t passed what could be described as their ‘Blood-room’, where they’d been killing nearby humans for food. Even he’d been struck by the sheer amount of gore splattering the wall. 

Q didn’t have a potion to stop vampire venom, so they were all being extra careful. Or at least, trying to be. It was all kind of for naught, though, when one of them managed to duck under his arm on a swing down before Bond could swipe to his left. He had to jerk back to avoid the sweep of fangs at his neck, and wound up falling backwards over a different prone body. Vampire venom had to be entered through the neck to be effective, which is why James’ hands went to cover it as soon as his sword was knocked from his hand. But vampires were also supernaturally strong, especially the young ones, so cold hands grasped over his and pulled, and there wasn’t much he could do to fight it. 

Getting bitten by a vampire wasn’t the way James thought he’d go -- probably because he wasn’t actually going to die, at least not yet -- but he did hope Q or at least Alec would have the good graces to put him down before he hurt anyone. 

He hears someone to his left shout his name, but they sound too far away to be much help. However, the loud snarl that subsequently follows sounds a lot closer, and that was all he could register before a flash of black sweeps past him and bodily tackles the young vampire off of him. 

Bond quickly sits up and grasps his sword. He looks over next to him to see the still form of the vampire that’d almost bit him. It is lying prone on the floor, face frozen in pain with its throat ripped out next to it on the ground. It is still breathing though, with a horrible bubbling noise. Bond looks at the large black panther standing next to it, panting and staring up at Bond with a sharp pair of green eyes that he’d recognize anywhere

“Thanks, Q.”

The vampire between them gives an abortive lurch upward, but is foiled by a pair of claws to the face, then Bond’s sword straight through the heart. 

There are only a few more vampires to clear out after that. The first time this had happened, James had a hard time grasping that his Quartermaster was a large jungle cat. But he has now grown quite used to it, able to work seamlessly in battle with Q lurching here and there and ripping a throat out every now and then. It doesn’t kill them, but it disoriented them enough for Bond to get around to stabbing them.

Alec and Eve are clearing the second floor. They are doing pretty well judging by the occasional body falling through the hole in the floor every now and then.

“Sorry,” Alec calls down when one of them comes too close to nearly hitting both Q and Bond at the same time.

Eventually, the vampires are all dead. Bond turns around from cleaning his sword to see Q as a big cat picking his away from through bodies of the fallen vampires, giving a couple of them experimental sniffs to make sure they were actually dead. Once Q reaches his feet, he sits down and looks up at Bond. He still has blood coating his face, but his tail’s swishing contently in a great juxtaposition. 

“You’ve gone and made a bloody mess of yourself” Bond says, looking down in mock reproach. “You know you don’t know how to change back”

Q gives a rather impertinent meowl, snapping his tale. 

“Aw, dammit Q,” Moneypenny says as she makes her way over to them, Alec following behind her. Both of them seem pretty okay, if only with a few deep scratches, most likely from fingernails rather than teeth. “You know you don’t know how to change back.”

Q gives a rather annoyed meow at the repetition happening here.

“That’s Q?” Alec demands astonished, walking up to Q with absolutely no practical hesitation.  “I knew I was on to something with kittens,” Alec reaches out to pet Q’s head, and Q responds by snapping at his hand. It isn’t anything particularly vicious, and wouldn’t have hurt more than a swat had he actually gotten Alec. As it is, Alec doesn’t even seem mildly fazed by the act, if his wide grin is anything to go by.

“Yes, a fully grown panther is the same as, what was it you said? A mangy haired kitten?” James laughs. Q gives a very characteristic eyeroll and shakes his head, getting up onto all fours again. 

Almost immediately, James notices the slight limp in Q’s step. 

“Wait, he’s hurt.” Bond quickly kneels down next to Q and tenderly lifts his injured paw for inspection. Even through the thick black fur, Bond can see that the joint is swollen pretty badly. Q gives a soft mewl when Bond touches it, and immediately begins trying to pull away.

“Is he bitten?” Eve asks concerned, taking a few steps closer closer.

Bond does a quick check of the skin surrounding the paw, despite Q’s protests, before setting it back on the ground.

“No, I think it’s just small break, or a bad sprain, but I can’t be sure.” Bond couldn't say he had a lot of experience in the veterinary field. Despite this not being the first time he’s seen Q like this, the most he’s ever done is to remove the occasional thorn from Q’s paw, or plaster the occasional wound through fur.

But Bond does know enough to know Q shouldn’t be walking on it…

Alec and Eve make the whole situation much worse than it actually is, both laughing helplessly, as James carries their a 90-pound panther Quartermaster out of the Vampire Hide-Out. 

* * *

  
  


Obviously they couldn't stay the night with Q as a panther; no amount of innkeeper intimidation could change that. Instead, they set up camp a little ways down the road, where they’d be able to avoid any remaining hostiles that may have escaped the hideout. Q had obediently yet reluctantly remained perched on the backside of Bond’s horse for the ride, although it did cause Bond’s horse quite an amount of grief in the beginning. 

Bond sees to Q’s leg once the fire’s bright enough to allow him to do so. Q gives a sharp hiss when Bond wraps it, but it’s more directed at the pain than it is at Bond.

“He can’t change back?” Alec asks from the opposite side of the fire. He’s got a couple of dead animals hanging over a thick branch as a result of his late night hunt.  

“He probably did something with the potion that went wrong and he doesn't want to admit it,” Eve laughs, ignoring Q’s growl as Bond finishes wrapping up his leg. “It takes him about a day to make the transformation back”

“Sounds plausible” James agrees, smirking when Q whips his head around to snarl at him. 

“Easy there Q,” Alec laughs, coming around to the other side of the fire and depositing a few hares and a squirrel on the ground between Eve and James. He turns back to Q who was still laying on the ground, paw wrapped with Bond absentmindedly stroking his flank. Q was even purring a little bit, but he was watching Alec with a look that at least Bond knew meant he was absolutely not to mention it. 

“So, Q,” Alec begins, gaze briefly flicking down to the dead hare. Q’s gaze flicks up to him. “Do you want me to put one on the fire for you, or are you just going full jungle cat?”

Bond watches as Eve laugh when Q dramatically throws his head back onto the ground in a show of exasperation.

* * *

  
  


Bond takes first watch after dinner, partially because Alec had gone hunting and Eve just looked exhausted, but also partially because the adrenaline of nearly being changed into a vampire was still high, thrumming through his body. 

He walks away from the campsite until the trees are blocking the fire enough that he can’t hear Eve and Alec’s voices anymore. He finds a small stump, comfortable enough for sitting on, and positioned well enough to allow him to lean his back against a larger intact tree behind him. 

A mewl breaks Bond out of a train of thought that was quickly growing dark. Q’s form slides out of the darkness until he’s sitting at Bond’s feet. He gives another small mewl, one that definitely should not be coming from such a fearsome predator as Q looks.

“You’re not supposed to be on that leg,” Bond says, trying to sound stern and failing at the side of Q’s cat face staring, wide-eyed, back at him in the moonlight. “Stop it with the cat eyes, Q, they don’t work.” 

They definitely work, and already Bond could feel his resolve dissolving.

Q mewls again, tail swishing dismissively. Then he sits up on his back legs, placing his paws on Bond’s knees so they were at eye level, and gave another tiny mewl. Bond doesn't speak cat, but he’s spent enough time with the Quartermaster in human form to get a general knowledge of what he’s saying in cat form.  He can’t tell exactly what Q wants, but it sounds like concern in the Quartermaster’s tone. 

Instinctively, or at least that's what he tells himself, Bond reaches up to pet him between his ears. He sort of expects Q to snap at him again for it, so he relaxes and smirks when Q begins to purr loudly from deep within his chest and his eyes fall into slits out of bliss. 

“Couldn't sleep?” 

Q’s ear flicks in minor acknowledgment that he heard Bond, but he doesn't make any other moves to answer the question.  They sit in silence for a bit longer before Bond gave the thick part of Q’s neck a heavy pat and Q drops down to all fours again.

Bond clears his throat. “Thank you, for saving me earlier” Bond says, quiet and serious.

Q meows again, swishing his tail up to lay over his paws, before laying down with a feline grace amongst the grass and twigs, tucking his paws up underneath him.

“Have you come to keep my company then? Or are Eve and Alec teasing you again?”

Q gives a short meow that most likely meant ‘shut it’ before he lays his head down onto his paws.

  
  


Bond carries Q for a second time later that night when Eve comes to relieve him. She tries to conceal her laughter, though Bond could still hear her snickers as he lifts Q’s sleeping form and carries him like a very large sleeping child towards the fire. 

Q wakes up when Bond sets him down, only briefly enough to roll over onto his side, stretching out in the warmth of the fire. Bond goes to lay parallel to him, but as he moves away he’s stopped by large paw, settling heavily on his shoulder and an insistent meow. Q’s peering up at him from where he’s still laying, watching him pointedly. He meowls again, then lets his head fall onto the ground as a clear invitation, and Bond finally concedes.  He falls asleep with his head on Q’s flank, slowly lulled to sleep by the deep breathing of the big cat beneath him. 


	5. Chapter 5

“The doctor said you weren’t supposed to have that wrap off,” Bond says as sternly as he can when he sees Q as he enters their tiny workshop. The Quartermaster is standing behind his desk, reading through a couple of pages of parchment. 

 

“It itches,” Q replies distractedly as he finishes reading, before turning to Bond. “You’re not supposed to be here today.”

 

“You enchanted the door to accept my handprint,” Bond says, grinning. “How could I resist an invitation like that?”

 

Q rolls his eyes and sits down in his chair, placing the parchment on his desk. He’s stressed. Bond can tell in the way he sets his shoulders and the sour look on his face.  

 

“Are those from the king?” Bond asks, recognizing the seal on the bottom of the first page.

 

Q sighs heavily, leaning forward to grab the first piece of paper again and handing it to Bond. 

 

“Yes. Apparently, I’ve been specially commissioned by him to create a potent yet mass-produced form of werewolf venom,” he says. “It’s a bitch to make though,” he adds, gesturing to the several large glass bottles of a shimmering, milky white liquid next to an empty cauldron. “Werewolf venom is incredibly unstable. It breaks apart easily, being a naturally created venom. To do anything with it I first have to come up with a way to keep the basic makeup of it together, before I can add anything to it, and there just seems to be no way to do that. Eve’s been down here helping me with it as much as she can.”

 

Bond looks back to Q in confusion. “What would the king want with werewolf venom?”

 

“I’m guessing for research purposes, mainly.” Q shrugs, looking put out. “But honestly, it beats me. I don’t get very many chances to ask questions.”

 

Bond looks down at the parchment again, concerned. “Maybe you should start…” 

 

It doesn't sit well with Bond, the whole scenario. He looks down at the other piece of parchment on Q’s desk, recognizing M’s seal at the bottom of this one.

 

“Another mission?” He asks, picking it up. “You might've told me.”

 

Q stands up and comes around his desk, plucking the paper out from Bond’s hands before he can even begin to read it. “I would’ve if it concerned you,” he says with an abrupt amount of chill in his voice.

 

Bond turns to Q, suprised. Q meets his gaze levelly. “You’re going on an assignment without me?” 

 

“As I am the only one who's trained to deal with this kind of threat, yes, I am,” Q responds coolly.

 

There’s a twinge of frustration in Bond’s chest and he doesn’t really want to process why. “And what, pray tell, kind of threat is this?”

 

Q sighs again, this time exasperated, dropping his hands to his sides. “It's honestly not that big of a threat, Bond, if anything it's more recon.”

 

“Q, isn’t recon the precise thing we do with all our missions? The exact reason we go together so neither one of us ends up out of our league?” Bond asks, watching as Q walks back to his desk chair, sitting down heavily in it. 

 

“Yes Bond, but you’re out of your league here before we even go so it doesn’t make much sense to bring you along,” Q says, voice growing hard. 

 

“What is it?” Bond demands, voice dangerously cool. He can tell when people are purposefully withholding information. 

 

Q rolls his eyes again, stubbornly refusing to look Bond in the eye.

 

“Q,” Bond says, his voice falling to almost a growl. 

 

The air’s tense between them for a long couple of seconds before Q finally exhales tightly and says, “An illusionist.”

 

The faint taste of seawater fills Bond’s mouth, the soft scent of hydrangea and roses and gentle feather light touches. Q’s watching him sharply from where he’s still sat in his desk. It takes Bond a moment to reform his words, tongue now tasting ash.

 

“No.”

 

“Bond, I can’t just bloody well say no,” Q finally snaps, frustrated. “Neither Eve nor Alec have the skill required either!”

 

“And you bloody well aren’t going alone either,” Bond replies with equal amounts of frustration and force.

 

“I know what happened to you.” Q finally says, abruptly, voice the tensest Bond has ever heard it. “I’ve read your file. Vesper. Her abilities…” 

 

Bond has to force himself to breathe as Q speaks. It’s the first time either of them address this; both the story of Vesper and Q having read Bond’s file.  “You’re part of the reason M’s formed the bloody division in the first place.” 

 

“It’s irrelevant,” Bond manages to spit out, his teeth ground tight together. 

 

“It’s not!” Q exclaims “Listen, Bond, it takes months, even years, for people to learn how to disillusion themselves. Everything feels so real when you’re in them. It’s like fighting yourself.” He sits back heavily in his seat. “There’s a sorcerer northwest causing problems, and all the latest intel points to him being an illusionist. I leave in three days.”

 

Bond doesn’t say anything. He just adamantly holds Q’s gaze with his own, studying the complex expression across the Quartermaster’s face. 

 

“If I had time to teach you I would Bond,” Q says without breaking eye contact. “But I’d rather go alone than put you in a position like that again.”

 

Bond takes a slow step forward, still not breaking Q’s gaze. He reaches forward deliberately and sets the parchment from M that’d been in his hand onto the desk in between them. It’s horrendously wrinkled on account of having been caught in Bond’s clenched fist. Q’s gaze finally flickers down to it for a brief second, then back up to Bond, a eyebrow raised in askance.

 

“I’m a quick learner,” Bond says shortly, deadly serious.

 

* * *

“I don’t know what you expect me to be able to teach you in three days,” Q’s saying as he walks ahead of Bond. “It took me years to learn, myself.” 

 

He leads Bond up the narrow path that leads away from the castle into denser woods that line one of the hillsides that encloses the castle. There’s a clearing not too far down the path. They’d come here sometimes, when Q had a new combative spell he wanted to try, or Bond decided that they both needed fresh air for a while. They’d spent many afternoons up here with Bond and Alec sparring while Eve and Q sat nearby, discussing potions.  

 

“How many did it take you to master it?” Bond asks, pointedly ignoring Q’s quip about him. 

 

“It’s easy once you’ve learned the logistics of it,” Q answers honestly. He glances over his shoulder back at Bond briefly, charting his reaction to all of this before focusing back on the path in front of them.

 

Once they reach the top, and the trees open up to a hidden secluded field, Q turns to face Bond. His green eyes are filled with an uncharacteristic type of concern as he studies Bond’s expression. 

 

“You don’t  _ have _ to do this Bond. There’s nothing wrong with changing your mind… I know with--”

 

“It’s fine” Bond says shortly, cutting Q off before he could say her name. It probably wasn’t fine, but for Q, it had to be.

 

Q’s quiet for a long while, obviously torn, before he exhales slowly. “Alright then.” He squares his shoulders then, taking a couple steps backwards and away from Bond. “It’s easier to create illusions with people you know, which is why yours was so particularly vivid. Illusions are a collaborative work between the spell caster and its target. 

 

“Basically, what I create is the canvas and the main plot, and your subconscious fills it in with the necessary details to steer it where I want it to go. The more familiar I am with a target's subconscious, their behaviors and instincts, the easier it is for me to create a larger plot that can be believed without triggering their subconscious into realizing what’s happening.” 

 

“So basically it’s 90% me, 10% you,” Bond says evenly. 

 

Q pauses for a moment, thinking, before saying, “No, I’d say it’s more fifty-fifty. The subconscious is powerful. It’s like a dream; it feels real when you're in it, every detail. It's only when you notice something wrong, say an incorrect number of fingers on your hands, that you realize it’s a dream. The subconscious can work in both ways, creating the illusion around you but also destroying it.”

 

“So I just have to figure out ways to notice it’s an illusion, then it will fall apart?” Bond asks, because it doesn't really seem all that hard. 

 

Q nods. “Yes, you have to notice. But the hardest part is remembering to notice. Once you’re in a dream, you don’t really remember much from the real world, do you? You have to find a way to remember to look for these errors in the illusions before you enter them, otherwise it could take hours for you to remember.”

 

Bond considers for a moment. 

 

“Bond, I don’t know how strong this sorcerer may be,” Q says earnestly. “I’m by no means a professional. I’ve only had a couple years of practice. He could have had decades. If he’s good at what he does, then I’m not sure how much this will help us.”

 

It’s a thought that does bring fear bubbling up in Bond’s chest. The idea of another life of lies, pulling him in and twisting his mind, blocking out his most basic of senses…

 

But the thought Q facing something similar, or worse, alone, is enough to convince him. 

 

“It would seem practice is really the only option we have then.” And it is, as far as Bond is concerned.

Q sighs, defeated. “Alright then, Bond. Try to focus, try to keep a thought, try to remember to look. Find what’s not real.” Q squats down and touches the soft grass. “We’ll start small.” 

Bond watches as a thin pulse of blue emits from Q’s outstretched hand, tangled in the blades. A heavy wind pushes through the trees above them. Bond can feel the chill of winter picking at his skin, even through his tunic. It’s raining, only sprinkles of it, but still enough to intensify the chill of it. The sun’s shining brightly overhead.

“Bond…” James turns around and it’s… it’s the smiling face of his mother. She hasn’t aged a day since Bond last had a memory of her. Her salt-and-pepper-colored hair is still pulled into an intricate braid, her northern furs piled up around her neck. Even though he recognizes her, apprehension wells up in the pit of his stomach. Something about it feels off. 

Another fat raindrop lands square on his nose. The sun shines brightly overhead. 

“James...You’ve grown so much. I’ve missed you so much,” his mother is saying. Her lips are pressed together in a thin line of seeming displeasure, if one didn’t know her, but Bond can tell she’s delighted. “James, my dear.”

It’s raining. The sun shines brightly overhead…

It’s raining….

James is frozen as his mother grins. Her lips are not moving.

It’s raining. 

Bond comes back to himself in the same field, a little ways away from Q, who’s watching him closely with an unreadable expression. 

“Bond, who am I?” Q asks steadily. 

Fuzziness is still clouding Bond’s brain, a cotton feeling filling his mouth, but he recognizes the face before him. “Q.”

“And who else is in this meadow?” Q asks, getting to his feet.

Bond glances around, only briefly. He can see a glimpse of grey storm clouds forming behind the large hills visible through the clearing. There’s no one else there. 

Q doesn’t visibly relax until he says as much. “So then,” he starts, crossing the distance between them. “Tell me what you remember.”

Bond has to think back for a second, to what he’d just experienced. It comes back to him like he’s remembering it through disrupted water; everything's distorted and in pieces. 

“My mother,” Bond says slowly “or at least, I think it was.”

Q nods. “A common device, something inserted into the illusion to distract your attention from the area around you. I made it.” Q explains “But think, Bond, what was around you, think about the land, the sounds.” 

Bond thinks long and hard about it for a while. “There was something, a feeling I had, when I was looking at her. Something was off, I could tell…” 

Q’s peering at him, expression again unreadable. Bond struggles again, trying desperately to remember, but he fails, shaking his head. He drops Q’s gaze and turns away, frustrated. 

“It’s okay, Bond,” Q says, placing a hand on Bond’s shoulder and drawing his gaze back to him. “I didn’t expect you to get this on your first try, and you’re a fool to have done so, yourself. You’re going to have to cut yourself some slack if you want to succeed.”

Bond nods slowly. “Alright, let’s have another go.”

Q stares at him, scrutinizing for a long second, brows pulled into the center, before he moves. Q closes the space between them quickly and deliberately, leaving Bond with very little time to gather his thoughts or react before Q’s lips are crashing onto his. The taste of flesh on flesh is exhilarating, breathtaking; Q’s lips part open, sliding across his, slick and hot. Hands find themselves all over Bond’s body, their touch burning, scalding, blistering; it was too hot. 

It was too  _ hot _

_ Hot. _

Bond jerks back and it’s a similar feeling of abruptly coming awake from a dream. He’s stood in the meadow still, and Q’s watching him from a distance. 

“Bond--”

“Q, your name is Q, and there’s no one else here.”

“How many fingers are on your left hand?”

Bond looks down at his hand. “6,” he says instantly. 

The feeling of coming awake again, and Q’s in the same place again… Bond breathes slowly:

“Six...six fingers” He manages to get out.

Q grins like the sun. 


	6. Chapter 6

It takes Bond two whole days to become at least adequate enough that Q will even consider bringing him on the mission. Bond’s still got a lot of work to do by the end of it, but he’s learned that if he stops, and breathes for just a moment, he can gather just enough memory to think about something, some detail, whether it’s the weather or his hands. He’s only been able to break Q’s illusion twice, but he’d come close enough countless of other times. 

 

Q  had mandated break times between every few sessions to give Bond a second to rest. There were drawbacks to having too many illusions in your head in a short period of time, and that is that they become increasingly believable the longer the illusion takes place. And while Q didn’t have the power to keep up long term illusions, Q was concerned the repetition of the smaller practices they’d been doing would be enough to tax Bond’s mind over the edge of reasonability.

 

The breaks mainly consisted of an hour or two back in the shop, Q working on what was increasingly being referred to as “The Blasted Werewolf Potion”. Bond usually tries to preoccupy himself against the urge to continue their training, as Q was immovable on the subject. Early on the second day he found himself reading a book on werewolves, trying to find anything that would help his increasingly frustrated Quartermaster.

 

“Have you found anything of use?” Q asks, nodding towards the book on Bond’s lap as he leans back away from his cauldron, a look of defeat on his face.  

 

“Nothing that you probably don’t already know. It’s fickle stuff, so hard to destroy but also very hard to keep from deteriorating once it’s mixed,” Bond answers

 

Q nods, and pushes his hair out of his eyes. “Yes, the venom is rather complex in that it erodes too quickly when mixed with anything that’s not venom. It’s incredibly unstable”

 

Bond nods. It really was a tricky problem for Q to have been commissioned on such a deadline to finish. Bond had read everything of note on venom in Q’s book, but there isn’t enough on it to be anything of use. There just isn’t enough precedence in the field of werewolf studies for Q to have any kind of help on this sort of endeavour.

 

But then, Bond has a thought.

 

“Q… is it possible that the venom mutates when threatened, similar to the wolves themselves? With something other than silver--”

 

“I had a similar thought Bond, but it’s very hard to stab venom…” 

 

“Yes, Q” Bond says, leaning forward to look harder at the cauldron, shutting the book. “But what about fire?”

 

Bond half expects Q to tell him he’s already tried that too, which wouldn’t surprise him, even though the flame under the cauldron isn’t lit. So it does surprise Bond when Q pauses, considering, then stands from the table abruptly. 

 

“Bond, you brilliant, brilliant man, of course! Fire would be able to damage the venom enough to trigger the reinforcement process, enabling it to be strong enough to survive the potion mixture.” Q looks elated and relieved, and it’s honestly beautiful. 

 

The thought catches Bond off-guard. 

 

Q empties the last of whatever was in the tea kettle into a bucket nearby before emptying a vial of werewolf venom into it, and now James is going to have to remember to get a new kettle. He doesn’t comment on it though, before Q moves it over the flame of his hearth. 

 

Q crouches down next to the kettle, watching the liquid begin to heat. Bond joins his side, shoulder to shoulder, watching the pot eagerly.

 

They watch as the venom grows hot. It’s only when it begins to bubble, and a thin trail of white smoke begins to fill the pot that Q swears and goes to grab the lid of the kettle, placing it on in time to stop the smoke. 

 

“Shit, you didn’t inhale any of that, did you?” 

 

Bond shakes his head, watching as Q grabs the kettle with a pair of holders and moves it to the table. Bond tries not to think about the fact that there’s werewolf venom in their tea kettle. 

 

Bond makes Q leave the lid on long enough for the evaporation to recondense before he can open the lid again, and it’s the most impatient three minutes Bond’s ever had to witness in his life. Finally, Q removes the lid. The soft pale glow of it is a dead give away. Q gives an uncharacteristic shout of excitement at the sight.

 

“Shit… Shit. We did it…,” Q says, sounding amazed before he turns to Bond. His smile couldn’t be brighter. “We bloody did it!”

 

* * *

  
  


By the end of it, they’re both tired. Bond’s brain feels like it’s been exercising more than his body has, and Q just looks plain exhausted, because casting regular spells takes a moderate amount of energy. No doubt repeatedly casting illusionist spells for extended amounts of time took its toll, with the stress of the potion on top of everything else. 

 

It was unclear until they get back to the palace who’s garnered the worst end of the stick. Q stumbles a bit on the stairs down to his branch, but Bond’s reflexes are fast enough to steady him before he falls. He gives Bond an appreciative nod before continuing walking. 

 

It’s only when Q ambles back over to where his cauldron is that Bond realizes what he intends to do. 

 

“You can’t be serious,” Bond deadpans as Q takes his seat again next to the large cauldron. 

 

“Serious about what?” Q asks innocently; his eyes are deceivably clear. “I’ve got a deadline Bond, I can’t just give up everything I’m working on to teach you.”

 

“Did you even go home last night?” Bond asks because, come to think of it, he had found Q down here this morning, and he was pretty sure that Q was wearing those clothes two days ago, and --  _ dammit  _ Q!

 

“Come on then Q, you’ve been at this for days, you need to eat, and sleep,” Bond says firmly, standing because on one hand, he wasn’t about to let Q face a mysterious illusionist alone, and on the other, he wasn’t about to let him kill himself working sleep deprived on a highly unstable potion either. 

 

Q looks up with a scowl as though he’s offended that Bond could even suggest the fact he leave his potion. He wouldn’t be this snappish if he wasn’t as tired as he is right now. “Bond, I  _ can’t; _ we’ve only just figured out how to do this, otherwise I haven’t gotten anywhere with this yet, and honestly--”

 

But Bond’s also exhausted, and arguing with his stubborn-as-a-mule Quartermaster is not something he wants to do right now.

 

“Q, you can’t work half starved and sleep-deprived. You’re the genius, you should know that.”

 

“Yes, but--”

 

“Q.” Bond says it in such a low, stern tone that it leaves no room for argument. Q only briefly looks like he’s going to protest further, before he sighs and concedes. Q puts the tops back on his vials.

 

“What time’s it?” Q asks as he follows Bond. 

 

“Quarter past midnight,” Bond answers.

 

“Bugger. Guess the kitchen staff’s gone for the night.”

 

“That usually happens when people live normal lives, Q.” 

 

Q huffs but doesn't say much else, which is surprising considering how grumpy he’d been earlier towards Bond. But Bond was willing to look past it. 

 

“I’ve got some food at mine and Alec’s, and  besides, you don't look like you’re up for a ride back to your home anyway,” Bond says once they’ve reached the castle stables. Q’s wide-eyed in his struggle against sleep already,and Bond hasn’t any doubt he’d fall off his horse if he tries to ride back to wherever he lives. 

 

Q does not respond at all for a brief second, before he blinks widely and suddenly seems to come back to himself, albeit still exhausted-looking. “What? Oh, right, well I’ve been sleeping in the castle, so I really was off to find food…”

 

Bond can’t tell if Q’s being honest or is just hallucinating on sleep deprivation because he’s pretty sure M hasn’t given one of her suites to Q, and there’s no antechamber to Q’s workshop other than the room he tests his explosives in. “Where in the castle, Q?” Bond asks, looking at him bewildered. 

 

Q looks back at him in an equal amount of bewilderment. “My shop? There’s a couch there, you’ve been on it.”

 

Of course, of bloody course Q sleeps on his damn couch in his damn workshop. 

 

“To be fair, it’s very comfortable. And I do have a home, it’s just inconveniently far away, so it’s really not--”

 

“Dammit Q, get on the horse. You’re coming back to mine to get some semblance of a good meal and a good night's rest before we go on a highly dangerous, highly sensitive mission assignment tomorrow.”

 

Q scowls, and opens his mouth like he was about to argue, but Bond doesn’t let him. 

 

“Get. On. The. Horse.”

 

* * *

  
  


Alec still isn’t home from his mission when Bond and Q reach their house. It sits along a road, just a little ways outside of town. Bond has a feeling Q would’ve commented on its lived-in state, or lack thereof, if he’d been coherent enough to be able observe his own surroundings. As it is, he just follows Bond silently through the door, then sits quietly at the small two-person table Bond directs him to. 

 

He is in the middle of nodding off by the time Bond brings him back some bread and a thin soup with a few vegetables and chunks of meat in it. 

 

“C’mon Q, eat up, then to bed with you,” Bond says as he sets the bowl down before the exhausted Quartermaster. 

 

Q jolts a bit at the sudden sound of Bond’s voice, but he recovers quickly enough and begins eating slowly. 

 

After that comes a blur of Bond corralling Q and his mess of limbs to his bed. Q’s easily swallowed by the thick furs and pelts Bond has covering his bed. He’s asleep by the time his head hits the pillow. Bond spends too long of a moment just watching Q sleeping in his bed before he’s hit with the realization that there isn’t actually another place for him to sleep in his house. It was something he wasn’t deeply concerned with when he’d dragged Q home. At that time he was just concerned with getting Q something to eat and taking him home. But now the real question of where he was going to sleep persists. 

 

He supposes he could sleep with Alec, but then he recalls just how bad that ends for him everytime he tries.

 

Bond decides just to fuck it at the memory of Alec snoring loudly and clinging to him in an iron grasp of limbs while Bond stares up at the ceiling cursing the gods. He promptly maneuvers himself into bed next to Q, determined to wake up before Q does.

 

* * *

  
  


Q never does know. Alec, on the other hand, wakes Bond up with a particularly pointed clearing of his throat in the early hours of the morning, Q’s too fast asleep to be bothered. 

 

Bond quickly untangles himself from the mess of limbs he and the Quartermaster had become entangled in at the sight of Alec’s shit-eating grin.

 

“You’re shagging him!” Alec accuses once Bond has left the bedroom and is now standing in the center of their small main room, restocking the fire. “You’re totally shagging our Quartermaster.”

“I’m not, Alec, he’s been asleep basically since I brought him home last night.”

 

“You must be a worse shag than I thought then, James,” Alec says, laughing. Bond gives him a glare over his shoulder before thrusting a log with a bit more force than necessary into the embers of the hearth. 

 

“Alec…” James warns when he stands back up and faces his still grinning best friend. 

 

“Okay, okay, you’re not shagging him,” Alec admits, holding up his hands. “But you want to.”

 

“Alec--”

 

“James, a blind man could hang around both of you for a minute and see how much you two want to shag,” Alec says flatly. “So just do it and be done. Then maybe Eve and I can get back to hanging around you two without suffocating on sexual tension.”

 

James huffs and shakes his head. They’re out of firewood, he notes in frustration, before going to the small chest and pulling out the axe in there, and heading outside.

 

“What, are you just going to chop wood to avoid this?” Alec demands, trailing him. “That is, unless, you don’t want it to be done after,” Alec says, watching James intently as James sets up a piece of wood on the chopping block and swings down.

 

“Oh my god.” 

 

“Alec, shut it,” James snaps.

 

“James! You want--”

 

“I don’t know what I want from him, Alec, that’s the bloody--” James slams the axe hard enough to split the log in one stride, a loud crack echoing afterward. He turns to look at Alec, trying to conceal the defensive anger rising up in his chest. “I don’t know what I want from him,” he reiterates.

 

Alec scrutinizes him closely, grey eyes tracking over his features for a few long seconds, before he sighs. “James...I’ve been your best mate for years. I’ve never seen you like this with anyone.”

 

Bond has. With Vesper. But he still doesn’t know how much of that was a lie, and he definitely doesn’t know how much he wants to think about that right now, especially with Alec, so instead he takes up his axe and repositions another log.

 

Alec rolls his eyes again, obviously thinking Bond childish for his imputence. Bond doesn’t care. 

 

“Whatever, James, just be careful… I don’t think there’re a lot of spells to mend a broken heart, and even if there were, you can’t cast them,” Alec points out helpfully before turning around and heading back inside. 

 

James stands, staring out at the acres of farmland across their house, then the village waking up in the distance, and just… breathes...

 

Q doesn't wake up until midday. He finds Bond in the main room, sitting at the table reading one of the books from Q’s library. It’s on werewolves. He’s definitely reading it to further his horizons on werewolves and not to see if there’s any information he could possibly find to help Q -- and that’s definitely a lie. Bond shuts the book when Q appears in the doorway bleary-eyed, but a lot more well-rested. 

 

“Do you have tea?” is the first thing out of Q’s mouth once he notices Bond at the table. 

 

Bond catches himself looking at Q and his sleep-tousled hair and sleepy eyes and thinks back to Alec’s words for half-second before he stands. “Ah, yeah, I’ll get the pot on.”

  
Q gives a tired smile of thanks. Bond feels his breath catch in his throat.

 


	7. Chapter 7

“Well, this was a grand waste of time,” Q says shortly, seething as he and Bond ride back into the palace stables.

 

Bond looks over at him. “You really wanted to fight an illusionist today,” he says, after he dismounts and begins unsaddling. 

 

Q sends him a short glare. “No, Bond, it just bothers me is all. All that work for what?” 

 

“Maybe the intel was wrong?” Bond offers, setting his saddle down on one of the posts.

 

“The intel’s not wrong,” Q gripes, “but something else is; I can tell.” 

 

Bond sighs. He knows Q’s stressed. The knit in his brow and the sharp way he pulls the leather of his saddle straps is enough to tell him that. He has reason to be. The mission itself ended with Bond and Q going to the spot their intel indicated the illusionist was at, and finding nothing. 

 

Bond had been suspicious of it at first, but Q had used a detection spell and it came back with nothing. 

 

“Q, there isn't anything we can do for now,” Bond points out, walking around his horse to face his Quartermaster. He settles a hand on Q’s shoulder, trying to ground him. 

 

Q still looks pissed, but the tight line of his shoulder relaxes, just a bit, and the hardness of his face isn’t as intense.

 

There’s a long moment of silence where Bond leaves his hand on Q’s shoulder and Q looks like he’s struggling for words before he finally just says:

 

“I don't like the way he’s just gone,” Q admits, looking down. “Now I feel like he’s a step ahead of us.” 

 

“Or maybe the intel’s just wrong. People are paranoid, Q, sometimes they see things that aren't real”

 

Q gives him a pointed look of disbelief and Bond laughs lightly. “Okay, okay, wrong explanation for an illusionist.” His hand slides off of Q’s shoulder. “It’ll be okay. We’ll figure it out.” 

 

Q opens his mouth to say something, when someone else enters the stables. It’s M’s pageboy, his expression worried. 

 

“Sir Bond, the Lady M says to tell you to report to her immediately. She says it’s urgent.” 

 

Bond knows that if it had been a true emergency she would've sent Tanner; but still, when M says it's urgent, it’s usually something that has to be dealt with immediately.

 

“I’m going to the lab,” Q says. “I’ll put your horse up.” 

 

“I’ll be down there after,” Bond says with a nod, before following the pageboy out of the stable. 

 

* * *

 

 

“Bond,” M says gravely when Bond walks into her office. Tanner shuts the door slowly behind him. “I’ve recently received news from the king, inquiring about the update of our new initiative.”

 

“We’ve just had our annual report to the Council,” Bond points out, confused.

 

“Yes, well the village leveling disasters you and Q have a penchant to cause every time you leave the castle still has not lessened,” M replies sharply. “But that’s not the concern here. The problem is,” M hands him the letter written on the crisp white parchment of the king. 

 

“That is the letter from the king from a couple of weeks ago, commissioning the Quartermaster.” Bond recognizes it as the one from Q’s office with the request for the wolves’ venom. Nothing seems too terribly off about it, the seal of the king still present on it. 

 

“Then there’s this one.” M hands him another paper and the difference is striking. Bond’s immediately filled with a sense of foreboding. The handwriting of one of the letters is definitely not from the Hand of the King, as both letters’ handwriting differ dramatically. The seal at the bottom of the letter commissioning Q gives away which one is the imposter, as the colors in the seal are significantly less rich, made of less expensive, yet similar dyes. Which means…

 

The ground shakes violently beneath them then, sending several small things crashing down from the shelves lining M’s walls. Both M and Bond race to the small window that overlooks the West wing of the  palace-- or at least, where it should be. 

 

Instead, there’s smoke is rising thick and heavy, shrouding the view of the entire west wing of the castle. The stables are down there, as is the kitchen is, and Q’s mage’s branch, and...

 

_ Q. _

Bond sprints out the door before M has a chance to say anything. Alec and Eve sprint past him as soon as he does; they both must’ve been in the Knight’ meeting room when the explosion happened.  

__

The three of them sprint down the hallway, all obviously thinking the same thing: about the Mage Branch and Q. 

__

It’s really only by chance that they manage to slow down enough to take a turn, and Bond hears the distinct sound of a fist against a door followed by what he can immediately recognize as Q’s strangled shouting. 

__

“Wait!” Bond shouts to Moneypenny and Alec, but they’re already running ahead. Bond swears and turns to the thick iron door to his right. There’s a key in the keyhole in the locked position. Bond turns it and the form of his Quartermaster stumbles straight into him. 

__

“Bond!” Q gasps. “Bond, oh god.” 

__

Bond’s got his arms around him and there’s the distinct smell of burning flesh. He looks down to see Q’s hands and forearms painted with grisly blisters and burns from where he’d been banging on the iron of the door. 

__

“Q…” Bond begins, trying to pull Q’s wrists to inspect them further. 

__

Q’s shaking visibly. A quick overview doesn’t reveal any other damage besides a large bruise on his temple. 

__

“Bond,” Q demands, his voice thin but strong, “What the hell’s going on, the whole room shook when--” Q cuts off with a gasp when he manages to peer past Bond, through the courtyard windows, to see the huge cloud of smoke billowing up from the west wing.

__

“Q, we need to get you out of here--” Bond says urgently, trying to guide Q with the arm still around his wrist.

__

Q’s not listening. He tries to give Bond a hard shove before taking off down the hallway, but Bond manages to catch him with ease. He gets his arms around the thin waist again, trying to hold onto Q’s flailing form. 

__

“Let me go!” Q shouts hoarsely. When Bond refuses, he grasps both of Bond’s hands with his and Bond feels a powerful shock jerk up through his system, sending him stumbling back. He’s momentarily out of breath and rooted in place while his system comes back online. Bond can’t move as he watches Q sprint around the corner. 

__

It doesn’t take long for Bond to catch up again, but only because he finds Q near where the rubble begins, shouting obscenities, this time with Alec’s arms held tightly around his middle. 

__

Bond can see Eve down the hall when he stops in an abrupt halt. She’s performing a very familiar spell. Silver strings appear, connecting the chests of the people milling about the in the rubble around her. Bond recognizes several of Q’s mages. A lot of them are visibly injured, bleeding heavily, but they were all moving… and snarling… hunched over in a horrifyingly familiar way...

__

The potion, Bond realizes, the werewolf’s venom Q had in his workshop, the one he’d only just managed to make before they left on their mission. The impending explosion must have released the gas and poisoned each member in Q’s branch with the venom. 

__

Q shouts again as Eve drops her hand down, cutting the bonds of the pack. She meets Bond’s eyes with a heartbreaking expression as what was once Q’s friends and mages begin to senselessly tear each other apart. 

__

“Get him out of here,” Eve shouts over the noise massacre. 

__

“No!” Q says loud and forceful as he begins to struggle violently in Alec’s embrace, swearing loudly, trying to free his hands from where Alec has them pinned. He ignores Alec’s shouts and attempts to turn him away in favor of escape. 

__

It would be absolutely futile to try to reason with him. Both he and Alec wince at the audible thud of James’ hilt hitting Q’s head, seamlessly knocking him unconscious.  

__

“Make sure Eve’s okay,” Bond says as he scoops Q up out of Alec’s embrace. “Somebody planned this, Alec. The letters to have Q make the werewolf venom were forged. Someone wanted this to happen; they locked Q inside a closet with an iron door.” 

__

Alec’s glances down to Q’s wrists, then back up to Bond. 

__

“Alec, they know the castle, and they know us.”

__

“Where are you going to go?” Alec asks, eyes very dark and very serious.

__

James glances back at the massacre taking place. They needed to get as far away from here as they could until they knew what was going on here, and who was behind this.

__

“Home,” James says decisively. “Meet me there once everything is settled and you’re sure M’s safe. We’ll decide from there.” 

__

Alec nods, before turning back to the few werewolves left. 

__


	8. Chapter 8

“This is my fault....I should’ve known no one would commission...fuck,” Q says quietly, sitting on a haystack as Bond tries to give him a quick once over once they’ve reached the stables.

 

There is a lot of debris and dust lingering, and the horses are anxious, but the explosion was centered enough to Q’s branch to leave the majority of the stables unscathed.

 

They don’t have a lot of time. Neither of them still know the full extent of the attack, and the remainder of their enemies could come bursting into the stable at any moment. But Bond knew he had to calm Q down before he even tried to get him on a horse and out of the castle.

 

“Do you feel nauseous at all?” Bond asks after a second, stilling Q by his shoulders to look into his eyes, checking for any uneven dilation.

 

Q gives him the hardest, most pointed look.

 

Bond sighs heavily under Q’s scrutiny. “Q, I, didn’t mean to hurt you. They were feral; they couldn’t be saved. I couldn’t just let you watch that--”

 

“I did it to them, Bond, I should’ve had to watch it,” Q insists desolately.  


“Q, It wasn’t your fault!” Bond says shortly, frustrated due to their lack of time.

 

“It sure as hell was!” Q cries back, voice cracking. “I made the venom. I made a super strand of venom because some maniac told me to; just because I was so damn determined to prove…”  

 

Bond shifts his hands to grasp Q around his wrists, trying to hold him steady and ground him at the same time. With Q at the edge of a full blown panic attack, they were getting into a dangerous situation, and losing time fast.

 

Q finally draws in a heavy, shaking breath. Bond meets his glare and holds it for a long second before Q finally winces and Bond suddenly remembers the burned skin around his hands.

 

“Sorry. Here,” Bond says, guiding him towards the saddled horse before they could start another argument and waste even more time.

 

He gives Q a hand getting on the horse just for the sake of not causing further damage to his already wrecked wrists. Once Q’s saddled on the horse, Bond comes around the the other side, knocking the reigns over the saddle. Before he mounts, he draws Q’s attention again from where he’s staring down at his hands.

 

“It’s not on you, Q, no one blames you but yourself,” he says gently, placing a hand on Q’s thigh.

 

“I’m going to kill them, Bond,” Q says slowly, his voice surprisingly strong, hardened by determination. “I will. I’m going to find whoever did this and kill them.”

 

Bond doesn’t have anything to say to that, so he doesn’t speak. He understands blinding revenge, and he also understands that that is the fastest road to irredemption. But Q’s not exactly reasonable right now; correcting him would be pointless. So instead he just leans back, drops his hand and sighs.

 

“First, we have to know who was behind it.“

 

Then there’s a loud shout from outside, and Bond knows that they need to leave. He mounts up behind Q, taking off out of the stables.

* * *

 

The first indication that something is wrong is that the bridge is down and there are no guards, as there should be in a heightened emergency like this.

 

There are shapes across the bridge, glints of silver and a torn banner. As Bond crosses the bridge, Q gasps behind him. What they see is a massacre; numerous guards and soldiers lay dead on the ground around them.

 

Q scrambles off the horse from behind Bond before he can stop him.

 

“Q!” He shouts, dismounting too.

 

Q picks his way across the bodies in favor of one leaning heavily against a tree. Bond recognizes it to be Tanner. He’s alive, covered in his own blood, but conscious. He’s cradling his arm to his chest and obviously in a lot of pain.

 

Bond kneels down beside Q next to Tanner.

 

Closer up, Bond can see it’s a pretty bad break in his arm-- a compound fracture, the bone visible and glistening. Q places a hand on Tanner’s shoulder trying to comfort him.

 

Tanner’s breathing hard, but he manages to turn his head, looking up at Bond. His face is pale from blood loss. “M” Tanner says, and Bond’s blood goes cold.

 

“They can’t be far,” Q says quickly, turning to look up at Bond. “I’ve got him, find her.”

 

Bond doesn’t hesitate. He takes off, leaving Q and Tanner behind. The recent rain has left the ground muddy and the footprints of M and her kidnapper are easily traceable.

 

He hears a hoarse shout from the woods when he’s a little ways down and breaks into a sprint, leaping over logs and slipping on the dense layer of dead leaves.  

 

Bond eventually sees the form of M, hunched under the form of a tall man with slick blonde hair, a long handled knife protruding from his back. She’s killed him, Bond realizes, coming to a halt.   

 

M’s bleeding heavily, though; Bond can see it dripping off of her. Bond goes to her, reaching her right as she collapses onto her knees. The other man’s body falls to the side. Bond ignores it in favor of taking its spot directly in front of M’s line of vision. He grasps M’s arms in his hands, holding them, shaking and weak. She looks at him, trembling and frail in a way she’s never been before. Bond holds her gaze until he realizes he’s watching the life leave her eyes.

 

She dies kneeling, not lying, holding on to the very last shreds of her pride.

 

Not far, back towards the main road, Bond can hear Q desperately shouting his name. He sounds concerned, and scared. Bond can’t react. He sits there with his arms full of his dead Lordess, wishing he could remember how to move.

 

There’s a brief pulse in the earth. It’s one of Q’s sensing spells, Bond can recognize the feeling of it. He knows enough about Q’s magic to recognize the brief tingle as the spell ricochets off him.

 

Bond waits. Time is passing, he knows this, but it feels like an eternity before Q enters his line of vision. He’s frantic, obviously panicking. There is blood smeared across the front of his shirt, but it’s not his. It’s probably Tanner’s.

 

Q’s wild eyes settle on him, then on M. Relief morphs into horror. A sound catches in the back of his throat, but when his eyes flick back up to Bond’s face Q swallows hard.

 

He closes the gap between them slowly, carefully, as if he’s afraid of startling James, or of his reaction. He glances briefly at the prone body lying on the ground a little ways away from them, then back to Bond’s face.

 

Q carefully extends a hand. Bond catches sight of the still red and angry burns lining the mage’s forearms and wrists and feels another nauseating twist of guilt at not being able to do anything about them either.

 

Q doesn’t seem to notice his inner turmoil. Instead, he swipes a finger against Bond’s cheek, touching something there. It comes away bloody. Bond realizes it’s M’s blood.

 

“Are you hurt?” Q asks, surprisingly clinical. Bond manages to shake his head no.

 

Bond half expects him to touch him again, to try to pull M out of his arms, to tell him they need to leave. Bond expects him to ask him something, to question how he’s doing, how he’s dealing with this which clearly he isn’t, but…

 

But instead, Q moves to sit down next to him. He presses close, his arm snaking through the gap of James’ elbow closest to him, getting closer but not unbearably so. The warm line of his body is startling, but not unwelcome. It relaxes one of the strings pulled tight in Bond’s chest, but there are a lot of them there.

 

“Close her eyes,” Q mumbles. He rests his cheek on Bond’s shoulder, another act of hesitant comfort that Bond welcomes purely because he doesn’t know what else to do with it.

 

It takes Bond a second to remember to move. But he does eventually, for M, for Q. He moves his arm out of Q’s grip for a brief second, to better support the weight of M, before gently passing his fingers over her lids, settling them back. She looks more peaceful like this… It’s a look that looks wrong on her. James swallows hard.

 

When he settles again, Q cautiously resettles against him with an air of hesitance again that only disappears when James minutely forces himself to relax against him.

 

All that James can process is the heavy sound of wind above them, the occasional splash of rainwater against his face, the bite of chill piercing through his clothes, the heavy weight of M in his arms and the warm line of Q pressed up against him.

 

There’s no indication of how much time passes with the two of them sitting there before there’s a loud sound of many feet, and people flocking into the woods around. It’s the rest of M’s guards, the ones who hadn’t been slain. There’s a shout near them, and soon Bond is watching as a group of men, lead by a tired and bloody Tanner, appears out of the line of trees.

* * *

 

 

A couple of hours later, Bond is sitting next to Q on a small bed in the healer’s room of the castle. It’s strange because Bond remembers getting here, remembers talking to the main castle healer, Madeleine, but all he can register is still just Q, who’s still sitting close to him. Bond can only process Q’s presence and the constant swirl of thick heavy dismay that’s plaguing him right now.

 

The two of them haven’t been separated since Tanner found them in the woods, no one had dared to try. Neither of them have said anything; both are silent as the grave and sit still as their various wounds are treated.

 

Q’s wrists are the worst injury between the two of them. They’re lined with blisters and burn marks, a couple of them bleeding sluggishly. The healer wrapping them is doing so cautiously, but even so, Q still flinches occasionally at the pain, his arms tensing in her hands.

 

It’s painful enough for Bond to watch the healer treat the first wrist, that when she moves to the second, Bond stops her and takes wrappings and salve from her. She releases the equipment to him with wide but understanding eyes. He doesn’t take it from her because she’s incompetent, but rather because he knows, first hand, Q’s penchant for casting minor stun spells accidentally when his wounds are being treated. While studying medicines is an advantage Bond doesn’t have, he’s spent enough time in the military to have more applicable background in treating wounds.

 

Q obligingly turns towards Bond at the slightest prod and allows Bond to tenderly lift his left hand ,supporting it against the soft, undamaged skin on the back of it. Bond smears the salve liberally, going quick, which Bond knows Q prefers when it comes to treating his wounds. He finishes and wraps Q’s wrists tightly.

 

“Thank you, Bond,” Q says quietly when he’s done.

 

Bond gives a small, silent nod.

 

It’s only a few moments longer before Tanner comes in. His wounds are dressed, but they’re still causing him pain, Bond can tell in the hard lines of his face. Tanner’s silent for a long second, surveying the close position of Bond and Q, Q’s wrists, and Bond’s expression. Eve and Alec aren’t far behind, and the four of them cram into the small room Bond and Q are in.

 

“She knew him, M did,” Bond says by way of cutting to the chase of the conversation, not really keen on small talk at this point.

 

Tanner studies his expression for a solid second while Eve, Q, and Alec watch. Eventually he says, “Yes. She did.”

 

“He’s the mage from the first time around,” Alec states plainly.

 

Tanner nods again, solemn. “Yes. His name was Tiago Rodriguez. He was brilliant. But he got too strong, started crossing lines. He was all too eager to kill those who could potentially be a threat. He wanted to expand our work further. He started up with ideas, theories on how we could be stronger.” Tanner inclines his chin. “M disbanded the initiative on the King’s order.”

 

“What did he want to do? To make it stronger?” Bond presses.

 

Tanner presses his lips together in a thin line.  “He wanted an army. Silva believed magic users to be held almost above regular humans. He believed them to be a superior species.”

 

“Which is why he didn’t kill me,” Q realizes quietly, his tone bitter,  “He must’ve seen me as a strong enough mage, that killing me would’ve been a waste.”    

 

Tanner nods, blinking slowly, “Instead of killing threats, he tried to recruit them. Werewolves, vampires, anything that he could get his hands on. When his ideas were struck down, when M decided they were too volatile, he started working alone to create them…”

 

“Which is why the King’s commission of Q wasn’t all that questionable,” Bond says. “It just seemed as though he’d decided to go with the plan.”

 

Tanner nods. “We were bloody idiots for not seeing it sooner, and now hundreds have to pay the price.”

 

“We all should’ve seen it sooner,” Bond counters. “Now we just have to deal with the outcome.”

* * *

 

Bond doesn’t go to M’s funeral. It’s taboo; as one of her knights he’s supposed to, but no one’s particularly knocking down his door to force him to. So he stays at home, empties a few bottles of rum, and spends the day wallowing and slowly drinking himself into a stupor.

 

Q stops by afterwards. He’s still dressed formally, hair tamed into some sense. He looks as bad as Bond feels in all honesty. There are heavy bags under his eyes, and he stands with a hunch, a look of defeat that Bond can relate to.

 

“How are you?” Q asks straightforward as a conversation starter.

 

Bond could lie, he’s good at lying. He could tell Q to leave, he could yell… But instead, he just says:

“Coping.”

 

And it’s not a lie. It’s not the truth, but it’s not a lie.

 

Q seems to understand him, however. “Can I come in?” he asks slowly, green eyes sharp.

 

Bond’s hesitant to say yes. Alec’s been out on recon for the past couple of days, trying to learn what he could from the attack. And with the shift in leadership happening in the Northern Castle, Bond hasn’t been called in yet for anything, so he’s more or less been wallowing in his home for the past few days. And by wallowing, he means drinking. A lot.

 

But Q’s watching him with tired but sharp, clever, eyes, and there’s not much Bond can do other than open the door and let him in.

 

“Eve came,” Q says as he walks into the main part of James’ house, turning to look at him. “She grew her flowers on the grave, like she always does. Everyone loved it.”

 

Bond swallows and hates the taste in his mouth. “She would’ve hated it,” Bond says without much thought.

 

Q’s eyes look sad, but he laughs at that, tight and strange-sounding. “She would’ve,” he agrees honestly. Q takes a second to look around the house, spending a while taking in everything, including the amount of open bottles around the room.

 

“So this is you coping,” he asks objectively. He’s not judging, he’s just… Bond knows he doesn’t have any reason to be angry with Q, and it’s that thought that lets him tamp down on the frustration turning to anger in his chest.

 

Bond breathes out a silent breath, regaining himself almost instantly. Instead, he says, “You look like you haven’t slept in days.”

 

Q looks mildly ashamed at that. “I’ve been trying to find what I can about Silva and what he’s been up to these past few years.” Q rubs at his forearm for a short second. Bond can see the blisters there are still pink and red, scabbed but only newly. They should be wrapped.

 

“I’ve been trying to use a trace in his magic. I’ve never done it before, but it could potentially show me where he’s casted spells, up to about a year ago. It’s hard and tedious, and there’s not a lot of information about it…” There’s a tremble in his hands when Q resettles them at his side. He meets Bond’s gaze stiffly, regardless.

 

A long moment of silence pauses in the air, as Bond takes Q in like Q had done earlier. There’s a lot to say in the uncovered burns, the tremble in his hands, the bags under his eyes.

 

There’s a lot to say, but Q already knows it. So instead, Bond just says:

 

“So this is you coping.”

* * *

 

He makes Q stay the night again. The mage’s reluctance isn’t unexpected, but he doesn’t push it too much, on account that this is the first time the two of them have even seen each other in days. It shouldn’t be that long apart, but for the two of them, having practically been together everyday for the past half a year, it feels like forever.

 

Bond makes Q stay and sleep, at least for a couple hours.

 

Bond gets the hearth in his room going  with perhaps a little more concentration than he should strictly need. There’s a lot hanging in the air between the two of them, on both their sides. But the last thing Bond feels like doing is addressing anything in it…

 

But Q still looks as dazed and tired from the events of the last few days. Bond knows he needs to talk about it, but Bond’s not even good at dealing with his own emotions, nevertheless someone else’s.

 

Bond’s stocking wood into the fire when Q speaks again.

 

He’s staring blankly ahead, across the room at the fire Bond’d set. “When I was seven, my mum died.”

 

Bond finishes stocking the wood of the fire, then stands up brushing off his hands. His first thought is to tell Q to stop because backstories meant contracts, at least in his eyes, but then Bond realizes that he’s already contracted to Q and had been for a long time. He takes a seat next to his Quartermaster on the bed.

 

“She was a witch, brilliant in every way. She made friends with the woodland nymphs, studied with them. She could enchant plants, talk to animals, and her house was amazing,” Q breathes fondly. “ It was full of bright life and—” Q gives a short shake of his head, brows twitching before he continues.

 

“Anyway, she loved people and wanted to help them all she could with her magic. But she didn’t understand their fear, or misunderstanding. People shut her out, she was shunned out of the market places, off the streets. She did everything she could for these people; helping their sick livestock, teaching them when to plant and how to care for them… When they’d listen.”

 

Q draws in a slow breath, furiously wiping the tears from his eyes when they began to spill over. “Then one year the crops failed. They’d planted the wrong ones, it was their own fault, they just hadn’t listened to her. The soil was drained, and it became strained. Lots of people fell sick, died from hunger. And the people, they blamed her, said she was bewitching the plants to fail.”

 

Q folds his hands down in his lap, looking up at the ceiling and blinking back more tears that threatened to fall. “I wanted to leave, because I’d seen the way some of these people would look at her. She felt she had to stay though, to help them get through the hardships. Then one night they came and took her. Witch burning had only just been outlawed for a year in the kingdom, and the far North still had yet to accept it. A man held me round the middle as I watched my mother burn.”

 

Q’s voice remained steady until the end, when it cracked on the uplift, but neither he nor James addressed it. “I saw your file James, when M took me on. I know the reasons that  made you so committed to her, and to what we do… I thought you should at least know mine.”

 

“You should hate us,” Bond says slowly, tentatively.

 

Q nods, his lips pressing into a thin line. “I should. But my mother, she loved your kind. She thought you were worth saving. It took me years to find her again within myself, to come back to this kingdom. I knew harbouring my anger would only get me so far, but helping M, and you, and this kingdom, I can help accomplish what my mother never could. I think, ultimately, that means more to me than avenging my mother ever could.”

* * *

 

In return for staying the night, Q makes him show him the rest of the alcohol in the house. There really isn’t much left, but Q takes the last of it anyway and places it in one of Bond’s supply chests before enchanting it with a locking spell. 

 

“Now you won’t be tempted,” Q says, before going to curl up in Bond’s bed.

 

In the main room, Bond sits down at the tiny dining table. He spends a considerable amount of time lost in thought. It’s only when they grow too painful that he remembers the bottle in Alec’s room upstairs one that Q hadn’t taken…

 

Bond goes up the stairs feeling guilty, and a short dig reveals about three quarters a bottle of rum hidden under Alec’s stuff in a chest. It’s not too much, and it certainly won’t last Bond very long at the rate he’s been going, but it’s enough.

 

Only, as soon as he uncorks the cap, inhaling the sharp taste of alcohol, he thinks of Q -- his tired expression, the thin tremble in his hands.

 

It’s ultimately the look in Q’s eye when Bond had called him out, that mutual understanding that shouldn’t have been there, that makes Bond recork the bottle. If he is going to steer Q out of his self destructive rut, he’d have to pull himself out of his own. Bond puts the bottle back. 

 

He goes to bed then, because the sun’s going down and there’s not much else to do. Q’s sound asleep curled in on himself, the hearth at the other side of the room.  

 

Bond doesn’t think twice before he lays down, too. When he slides into the bed, under the warm heavy fur pelts, Q turns over towards him, eyes still shut, but presses up close enough that it could be considered inappropriate if it weren’t the two of them. 

 

Bond’s legs press lightly against the Quartermaster’s. He studies Q’s expression. Even in sleep his brows are knitted a bit, distressed. Bond wants to smooth over them with his fingers, but he won’t. 

 

He closes his eyes, and begins drifting asleep to the soft breath of his Quartermaster.  

  
Q may or may not be be asleep; it doesn’t change the words when he sudd enly talks, quiet and low.

“It’s not your fault, James.”

Bond wants to believe it. 


	9. Chapter 9

Eve and Alec, come the next day, with Tanner at their heels. 

 

Transitioning from M to her cousin, Mallory, as the new Lord of the North hasn’t been the easiest thing. That, on top of finding all they can about Silva’s attack, has left everyone quite exhausted. 

 

Bond opens the door for them and they come into the main room, gathering around the small table near the hearth. Q’s still asleep in his bedroom.

 

Eve unclips her cloak and sets it over the back of the chair before reaching around her and placing her sack on the table. “Q’s lab was basically unsalvageable, but the runes he placed were resistant to the damage. He’s been scavenging for them for a while now, between trying to do what he can to trace Silva’s magic.” Eve looks a little guilty about that, but Bond won’t address it. 

 

“Anyway, Alec found them last night, buried far deep in the rubble but intact. We also found a still intact vial of the wolf venom, which M has entrusted Alec to guard for the time being,” Eve says, looking at Alec, who looks a little smug, in all honesty. “The runes most likely have information on anyone who was in the room before the explosion, but they’re complicated, and they’re Q’s design, so I can’t access them.”

 

Alec looks around. “Where is he anyway? Is he alright?” He says between bites of what meager breakfast they had left over for him at the table. It should be unsettling that Alec knows he’s here, but it’s not. It’s probably painfully obvious that Q would have come to James eventually.

 

“He’s still a little shaken up,” Bond explains. “He hasn’t been sleeping very well, or at all, these last few nights” He reaches out curiously to nudge the corner of one of the rune blocks Eve had set on the table. 

 

Everyone at the table starts when the little box’s sides fall apart and lines of ember scorch themselves into the wood of the table. 

 

“How did you do that?” Eve demands, standing up along with everyone else to inspect the smouldering rune. 

 

“Q must’ve enchanted it to respond to Bond’s touch too, incase anything happened to him,” Tanner supplies helpfully, though everyone at the  table except for Bond still seems a bit baffled by it. He would be lying if he said he hadn’t expected it when he reached out to touch the cube.

 

With the rune piece cracked, Eve makes short work of bringing up whatever it recorded. It’s like watching though Q’s crystal ball projections again, only this time the image is reflected above the ruin, fading at the edges but bright and strong in the center. 

 

The image shows Q’s office at an odd angle, from above the doorway. It is morning, but not early enough that branch is empty. There’s a soft murmur of noises and voices coming from the other side of the door. Then the scene falls eerily silent for a long moment.

 

Silva appears in the center of the room. His hair is pushed back away from his face, a jagged smile hanging on his lips that has something wrong with it, but what it is, Bond couldn’t tell. The four of them watch as he enters Q’s office, and lights the fire under the large potion Bond could recognize immediately. 

 

“That’s the werewolf venom…” Eve supplies. They watch as it grows warm. Silva’s adding something into the cauldron, doubling the contents almost instantly.

 

They watch the beginnings of a thin whisp of smoke rise from the pot, and the blonde man leaves the room. Tanner glances at Bond briefly before the sounds of the cauldron boiling draws back their attention. The white stream of smoke grows stronger and stronger. Something crashes in the room off screen when the office is filled with the smoke, and the image is now barely visible. Then there is a large explosion, large amounts of dust and debris fill the image, then it goes dark, presumably buried under the rubble of Q’s office.

 

“We should probably wake Q up then, he’d want to see this,” Eve says slowly. 

 

Bond has to agree. Even though Q needs to sleep, he now knows that the blonde-haired man was connected to M, now he has to know if he was connected to Q as well. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


“You sleep like a cat,” Bond says when he prods Q awake, sitting next to his sleeping form in the large bed of his room. Q uncurls himself out of his ball to blink up blearily at Bond. 

 

“Mmm, you sleep like a damn octopus,” Q grumbles back sleepily. So he had been awake when Bond extracted himself and all his tangling limbs from around his Quartermaster this morning. For some reason that doesn’t bother him.

 

Bond pets a hand through Q’s dark curls absentmindedly, pressing them away from his pale forehead. Q blinks a bit at the action, startled but not overtly surprised. He studies Bond with an unreadable expression for a second, before sitting up further on the bed.

 

“Bond?” Q asks, voice clearer now. “Is there something bothering you?”

 

Bond exhales, letting his hand fall to rest next to Q’s, their skin barely touching. “Eve’s here, with Alec.” He watches Q watch him for a second. “Eve found your rune piece, the one above your doorway.” Q’s expression turns serious and he gives a slight nod. “I opened it for them by accident.”

 

Q looks slightly embarrassed. “I’d been meaning to tell you about it…” he muses.

 

Bond gives him a half smile. “Q, Silva was in your office yesterday morning. He doubled the wolf’s venom in your cauldron before lighting it. It caused the explosion.”

 

Q nods solemnly and bites his lip, obviously wrangling down his emotions at the reminder of yesterday’s events. 

 

Bond takes a deep breath before he presses on. “Q, before we go back out there and see Eve and Alec and Tanner… Just… Q, did you know him?”

 

Q looks at him strangely, taken aback. “Bond, what? Did I know him? Are you implying that I would’ve set this up myself?” He asks incredulously. He isn’t exactly offended, not yet anyway. Bond can tell he’s giving Bond a chance to explain himself before any anger or offence sets in. 

 

“I’ve seen people on the wrong end of manipulation. And it’s coincidental that you managed to make the discover about the wolf’s venom the day this man attacks the palace.”

 

Understanding crosses Q’s face, perhaps more than Bond is actually comfortable with being there. Q shifts slightly so that he’s fully facing Bond, before meeting his gaze; face serious and earnest

 

“James, I need you to believe me when I say the only way I ever have, or ever wanted to know that bastard; is as a dead man.”

* * *

 

The transition to Mallory has been a bit rocky, in light of the former lady passing without an heir. The North is by far the most skeptical of all the regions, bonding close with their  lords and ladies, but Mallory is handling them brilliantly, hosting hearings for the airings of multiple grievances from many surrounding villages. Eve likes Mallory, Tanner respects him, Alec has yet to form an opinion, and Q claims that Mallory lets him get away with things budget-wise. Bond hasn’t yet formed his opinion.

 

In their meeting Mallory plays all his cards, displaying all his skepticism, hesitance, and wariness. Mallory believes M had a soft spot for Bond and that that was what kept him in the field. 

 

“But the young Quartermaster has personally vouched for your capabilities, calling them ‘adequate’,  so my worries are, for the moment, laid to rest,” Mallory says smoothly, making it clear whose opinion he trusts more. It isn’t personally offensive. Bond knew good business when he saw it.

 

But Bond is slightly offended at being called ‘adequate’ by Q, so he takes a trip down to the branch after his meeting with Mallory. 

 

Q’s branch is all but empty; many of the sorcerers in the branch had been unluckily present during the explosion. Q’s still trying to vet new ones to replace them and help him with his weapons development. Thus, he’s been working quite a lot lately.

 

“Q, do we need to have another performance review?” Bond asks, pushing open the door to Q’s office. “Mallory says you’ve called me adequate?”

 

“I didn’t think you’d find offense in something so trivial but clearly I forgot whom I was speaking about,” Q sighs. “I trust he also took the time to debrief you on our next assignment?”

 

“Wood Nymphs, I was told” Bond nods “are they usually troublemakers?”

 

“Particularly nasty, yes. They have a hatred for anything that differs from their kind. But they usually stick to themselves. These ones have developed a penchant for human sacrifice, which is why we are interfering now.”

 

“Where are they?” Bond asks, as Mallory hadn’t said in the meeting. 

 

“Myrin, just south of Malen,” Q answers.

 

Bond groans, remembering the disappointingly anti-climatic hunt for the Illusionist in Malen last week. “Lets hope this time we wind up a bit more excitement.”

 

“I never thought I’d wish for excitement on a mission with you Bond, but I can’t say I don’t agree after the last time.” 

 

Bond waits as Q gathers up a various assortment of things from around the office, only pausing to hand Bond another jar of the poison to coat his blade with. 

 

“That will work on nymphs as they are fae creatures, so at least we won’t have to worry about that.”

 

Nymphs, although clever in themselves, were easily felled if one could locate the piece of nature they were bound to, be it a tree or a bush, and then destroy it. Bond only has to distract them long enough for Q to cast a similar spell to the one he’d used on the wolves, only this time he has to solidify the connection between the nymph and their anchor, before using an incendiary spell to burn it. It has been tedious to say the least.

 

They work closely in a tight outcropping in the woods, working their way around the nymph’s altar rock, which is painted red from the blood of their previous sacrifices. 

 

“I cannot wait for these field adventures to be complete so I can develop your weaponry and send you out to do this shit alone,” Q says with a surprising amount of venom as the last tree finishes burning, the flame around it receding. 

 

“Feeling a little tired today, Q?” Bond asks as he comes around the other side of the rock, wiping the blood from his blade before he stores it again.

 

“I’m a little bit tired of this,” Q answers, gesturing at the massacre around them. “I don’t like killing these things, we share a common bond. It’s necessary but it feels wrong.”

 

“You’ve not had this problem before,” Bond points out, brows furrowing. 

 

“Yes, but that was before Silva.” 

 

Bond’s bewildered expression must make Q immediately continue. 

 

“I mean, he wanted to end the stigma around magic. He wanted to band the different groups together to use them for battle. By way of ruthless homicide, admittedly, but the idea that all magic users were, infact, tied to one another, is definitely something that stuck with me.” Q shrugs. “I don’t know. The lines are blurry. But I don’t like killing my own kind even when they’re lead astray.”

 

“You’d just prefer me to do it,” Bond concludes, not angry. 

 

Q smiles, thin and tight, before patting Bond on the shoulder “You do have to keep a job somehow, yes?” 

 

Bond follows his Quartermaster back into town, but inside he feels a tinge of worry. Not at his Quartermaster and his loyalty, but more at his Quartermaster and his sanity while trying to find an impossible balance between these two opposing sides; magic and non. 

 

Bond and Q wind up in an  inn that night, where they have to share a bed in a room that suffers from a terrible draft and leaks from the heavy rain outside. Outside of both of them being tired and a bit short tempered in the morning, that is the largest complication of the entire mission.

 

Or so Bond had thought.


	10. Chapter 10

Q gets sick afterwards.

 

It’s not an aching, stay in bed, resting kind of sick either. When the two of them are in the stables preparing to leave the village come morning, Bond abruptly turns around at the sound of violent retching coming from the front of the stable, to see Q hunched over and heaving.

 

It’s not particularly scary then. Bond dismisses it as a common illness, resolving to force Q to the healing ward once they return home.

 

“Maybe you should ride with me?” Bond says carefully as Q eases himself onto a hay stack for a break while Bond takes over saddling Q’s horse for him.

 

Q’s skin has gone too pale, and his breathing is notably laboured. At first Bond had suspected exhaustion, or maybe just a common cold. But now worry stirs up in his stomach at the realization that Q’s illness could be worse.

 

Q’s lack of argument is just as worrying as his physical appearance. He takes another drink of water from the sack at his hip.

 

“Do you need help up?” Bond says after a long pause of Q not moving.

 

Q nods again, slowly. He’s trembling when Bond gets a shoulder underneath his arm and manages to get him to his feet. Bond takes the time to place the back of his hand against Q’s cheek for a long second. Though his skin is sick and pale, it’s hot when Bond touches it. Anxiety claws up in Bond’s throat as he drops his hand. Q looks up at him blearily, but Bond can see there’s concern in his expression too, and maybe even a touch of fear.

 

It’s a day's ride home. Q spends the trip hunched over on the horse, in and out of consciousness. Bond’s worry grows stronger as Q’s condition worsens until stress is nearly choking him by the time they cross the castle bridge.

 

The few healers in the healing ward looks up sharply when Bond comes in, supporting Q with an arm under his shoulder.

 

“What is it?” Madeleine asks as Bond guides Q to one of the beds. Bond shakes his head because he doesn’t have an answer. Q’s condition seems much worse than any common illness he’d seen before, and it had come about so abruptly…

 

“It’s not an illness,” Bond concludes finally while Q lets out a low moan as Madeleine settles a cool cloth across his forehead. “At least, not a common one.”

 

The young healer pauses for a second, studying Q for a long moment, before she turns to one of the others standing about in the room.

 

“Send for Lady Moneypenny, immediately.”

 

One of the underlings nods and leaves the room quickly.

 

“There are some illnesses only common to their kind,” Madeleine says in response to Bond’s perplexed look before turning back to Q. “Miss Moneypenny can identify them better than I can.”

 

Q reaches the point of delirium in the meantime. The drastic decline in Q’s health in such a short time has Bond’s fear nearly doubling. Only this morning he’d been standing, but Q looks seconds away from death’s door now and all Bond can do to help is give him small sips of water from the flask Bond brought in with him.

 

Q takes small sips willingly, trying to sooth himself with the cool liquid, but he only gets a few in this time before he lurches forward and vomits over the side of the bed. Bond barely manages to step out of the way. At the same time, Moneypenny comes hurrying in through the door.

 

“How long has he been like this,” Eve demands. She moves immediately to Q’s bedside and sits down next to the Quartermaster, wrapping her hands around his shoulders and holding him steady as he vomits again pathetically. Eve gives a visible wince at the terrible retching sound Q makes.

 

Bond grimaces too. “Only since this morning, before we left Myrin.” he answers, meeting Eve’s grave expression.

 

Q’s only retching now, having emptied the last contents of his belly. Eve shushes him quietly and gently pulls him back into the bed.

 

Madeleine behind to grasps his arm. “Bond, Look.”

 

She’s pointing to where Q had been sick. The entire contents of his stomach are there on the floor, but also…

 

“Eve, there’s blood,” Bond says sharply. Eve gets to her feet immediately and comes around too, looking at the mess on the floor that’s swirling with a concerning amount of blood.

 

“He’s been poisoned. He’s bleeding internally,” Eve concludes gravelly, then turns to look at Bond. “How?”

 

Bond shakes his head. “Even with the nymphs he escaped unscathed.”

 

Eve swears and turns to scan the room. “We can’t treat it until we know what it is,” she says, frustrated and desperate.

 

“If he’s bleeding internally, there’s not a lot of time we have to stop it,” Madeleine adds with an equal amount of urgency.

 

Eve continues to scan the room, frowning and desperate. Bond does too, because they’re almost past the point of answers, to the point of desperation, trying to find anything that could save their dying friend.

 

“Wait” Eve stops short, turning to the flask on the table.

 

Bond comes up next to her as she picks up the flask. “I’ve been trying to get him to drink as much as possible…” Bond says shortly because he’s been trying water and they don’t have the time to waste on things he’s already tried.

 

“This is Q’s. He’s been drinking from it all day?” Eve asks, uncapping the flask.

 

Bond hums in affirmation, wondering where Eve’s train of thought is going. Eve looks at him with a brief unreadable glance, then uncaps the flask and turns it over to pour the last dregs of water. It spills out and splashes onto the floor. Madeleine looks up from tending to Q, alarmed by the noise. Something else then falls out of the flask into the small puddle on the floor.

 

Something wrapped in cloth. It’s wet in Bond’s hands when he lifts it up, the edges of the cloth sliding apart to reveal…

 

“It’s iron… it’s iron shavings,” Bond mumbles, sliding a thumb through the rusted filaments. Eve’s expression of horror reflects his own.

 

They have to move fast. Q’s been drinking the toxic water all day. Neither of them knew how much damage had already been done.

 

Bond winds up staying next to Q, periodically rolling the all but limp Quartermaster over in order for him to retch over the edge of the bed. Q’s only partially conscious, and mostly delirious throughout it all. He moans weakly in pain when Bond rolls him back over after he’s done being sick. His hands are cold and clammy and Bond tries his best to warm them between his own, and he intermittently uses a cool damp cloth against Q’s feverish forehead, but otherwise he’s practically useless, and it’s killing him.

 

Madeleine and Eve are both desperately working together to try to find a solution. Eve’s in the center of the room, reading and brewing in a small cauldron at the same time. She’d brought the cauldron up as soon as they discovered the iron. Madeleine assists her the best she can. Madeleine is clever in ways of normal human medicines. But her normal remedies either won't work on Q, or would be too slow-working to help him before it's too late.

 

But Eve’s brilliant with potions, arguably even better than Q. She’s able to brew in what seems like an age to Bond, but in reality is a record breakingly short amount of time; a potion that keeps the same properties as Madeleine's remedies, only working stronger and faster than before.

 

But it’s a waiting game, when it all gets down to it.

 

Q can barely keep it down. Bond supports him from behind by pressing his own chest up against Q’s, keeping him steady as Eve spoons-feeds him the finished remedy. It’s tedious work, the air between all of them incredibly tense.

 

They let Q lay back down after a while, once they’re sure he’ll keep the potion down. Then it’s just bated breathing and anxiety.

 

* * *

 

Bond and Eve spend the night in the ward. Madeleine is kind about it, but even if she weren't she would be hard-pressed to get either of the two of them to leave. She goes to bed late, once she’s sure she’s done all she can for the Quartermaster.

 

“I’ll be retiring then. If the Quartermaster’s condition changes, retrieve me immediately.”

 

Bond nods. Eve says, “Thank you, Madeleine” with a such surprising amount of fondness in her voice to the point that Bond’s head to snaps up to look at her.

 

Madeleine's polite, giving a small incline of her head, but Bond can tell she’s blushing, even in the low candlelight of the ward.

 

As soon as she’s gone, the widest, most shit-eating grin spreads across Bond’s face and Eve resolutely refuses to look at him for a long while before she abruptly lashes out, hitting Bond square in the chest.

 

Bond just laughs, recovering quickly from the assault. Eve smiles too, but she’s also blushing.

 

“Not a word, Bond,” Eve warns.

 

“Not even to Alec?” Bond asks, still a little bit amused.

 

“Especially not to Alec!” Eve says, mildly horrified. “I swear to god, Bond, I hear one rumor.”

 

“If you keep talking to her like that rumors will start themselves,” Bond protests, laughing again when Eve hits again and shushes him.

 

“You’ll wake Q.”

 

“You’re the one that’s been shouting,” Bond retorts quietly.

 

“And you’re a bloody pain in the arse,” Eve grumbles, pouting even.

 

“And I suppose the rumor mill surrounding Q and I has nothing to do with you?” Bond asks as he resettles himself on the bed, crossing his legs beneath him to face Eve.

 

Bond expects another hit, or at least a laugh. Instead, Moneypenny turns to face him, expression incredulous. “Bond,” she says, her voice full of disbelief. “You cannot be serious.”

 

Thrown off-guard and just plainly confused Bond gives her a bewildered expression.

 

Eve finally laughs, dry and incredulous. “You are without a doubt the densest person I’ve ever met… and he’s not far behind you.”

 

Bond only raises one eyebrow at her. “He’s my partner, Eve?”

 

“Right, yes, and Alec and I spend enough time around you to gather that. You two know eachother better than yourselves most of the time.”

 

Bond shrugs one shoulder. “We fight a lot together.”

 

“Yeah,” Eve agrees pointedly,“ But Alec and I fight together a lot too. Even in casual conversation, you two are hyperaware of each other. You know each other so well it’s practically sickening and in all honesty is entirely intimidating for anyone else that has to work together on a regular basis like you two do.”

 

“It's not my fault Alec's an idiot,” Bond tries slowly. Eve’s words roll around in his head. They remind him of Alec’s, that morning Q’d first spent the night. He’d said practically the same thing.

 

“You should talk to him about it, when he’s better,” Eve suggests after a moment of silence, her voice abruptly gentle.

 

Bond swallows, picking at a stray piece of thread in the blanket. “Q’s only interested in his work.”

 

Eve rolls her eyes. “Bullshit,” she says, laughing. “I’ve never seen two people so in love and refusing to acknowledge it.”

 

“Eve,” Bond warns slowly, “I’d lay off it if you don't want a portrait of you and Madaleine together going up in the castle somewhere.”

 

Eve swats at him again and sends another cautious glance towards the door of Madaleine’s room again. Bond watches with her for a long second, a grin on his face, waiting to see if the door would open again.

 

It’s Q that actually breaks the silence. He gives a short, winded and weak cough, twitches slightly in his sleep, and then falling silent again.

 

Eve purses her lips briefly before saying “You should let him know, at least,” she watches as Bond turns to look back over to Q. “Near death experiences are always a good set-up for confessions”

 

“I’m not going to confess to him because he almost died,” Bond says flatly.

 

“Ah, but not because you don't love him,” Eve points out, a sharp twinkle in her eye.

 

“It's going to be hard to get Madaleine in a near death situation, Eve, especially since she never leaves the ward,” Bond trades after a long moment of silence.

 

“Fuck you, Bond,” Eve grumbles.

 

Bond and Eve spend the rest of the night sat across from one another on the bed next to Q’s with a small deck of playing cards they’d found between them for a game that neither of them are particularly interested in.

 

Mallory comes by to visit when the sun’s rising again and filling the ward with a soft pink light. Bond’s the only one still awake when he comes in. Eve is curled up on her side with her head lying next to Bond’s knee.

 

“My Lord,” Bond addresses when M comes in, followed closely by a worried Tanner.

 

M inclines his head in acknowledgment. “Report?”

 

Bond clears his throat, turning to look again at the sleeping form of Q. “The Quartermaster was poisoned. Iron shavings slipped into his water flask. There’s no telling how long they’ve been there. I’ve gone over every possible scenario. The only one that seems remotely reasonable is someone must've done it while we slept in the inn in Myrin .”

 

Mallory nods shortly, humming under his breath. “And the Quartermaster's condition?”

 

Madeleine comes out from the other room. Bond had momentarily forgotten she’d been here all night, too. Her hair’s down, pulled over her shoulder.

 

“I believe It is safe to assume that the Quartermaster will survive this. However, dealing with his nature isn't something I'm familiar with. A regular human in a similar state to his now would have a good chance at living. However I doubt any mortal could fully survive the trauma he’s been through in the past day.”

 

Bond nods. “The iron will have certainly caused immeasurable amounts of internal damage. He will be out of commission for a while.”

 

M nods again. He’s obviously displeased by the news. Losing Q would certainly set him back in his goal to bring M’s new initiative up to the speed it'd been operating at before her death. But there was very little that could be done at this point. Eve was brilliant when it came to potions and strategies. But Q was unmatchable in applied magic, weaponizing it in the way M had intended the entire initiative to be built around.

 

“I want him kept in the castle, then. Guarded at all times. I won't risk losing him again,” M says finally, looking at Bond. Bond understands that M knows he’s not about to leave his partner’s side. Bond nods slowly.

 

“Very well then.” M turns to Madeleine. “Inform me of any changes to his conditions immediately.”

* * *

 

 

Q sleeps off and on for three entire days following the incident. Bond and Moneypenny take turns being with him, but he’s never left alone with just the guards posted outside his room, not yet anyway, for fear that his condition would take another turn for the worse.

 

By the fourth day, Q is able to stay awake for a longer amount of time; ; long enough to tell Bond that he’s starving and wants something other than Eve’s nutrient potions to eat.

 

Bond could argue. No one knew yet the extent of the damage to Q’s insides or how well he’d take real food. But even having come back so recently from death’s door, Q’s still as stern and bossy as ever and leaves very little room for argument.

 

Also, Bond might be feeling a little bit of that bone-deep guilt that had permeated him over the death of M, this time over what happened to Q. Even if the Quartermaster had lived, Bond can’t help but think about what could’ve happened. Had Eve not been there, had she not seen the flask, had it just been Bond, Q wouldn’t have lived. The thought twists up so tightly inside of him sometimes it almost makes him want to vomit.

 

Q looks at him occasionally like he knows and like he wants to say something about it. But Bond doesn’t give him the time to. Always quickly changing the conversation enough that Q’s sleep addled mind can’t keep the thought.

 

Bond comes back with dinner and Q’s still not asleep. He is still lying down though, and he looks up at Bond when he re-enters the room carrying a tray of soup and a small bit of soft bread.

 

Bond settles the tray he’d brought for him down at the end of the bed before going to Q’s side.

 

Q shuffles a bit, allowing Bond to slide in next to him. Even that small movement has his breathing a bit laboured. Bond gives him a second to recoup before sliding an arm around Q’s shoulder and helping him up into sitting position against the headboard.

 

“Are you going to be sick?” Bond asks because ever since the incident, Q’s stomach has been overly sensitive to even the smallest movements, revolting at the most usual things.

 

It's a good sign when Q thinks for a moment, then quietly shakes his head no.

 

Bond pulls the tray at their feet closer. The soup is a simple broth, with very small bits of vegetables and potato inside, the blandest ingredients he could think of when they were preparing it.

 

Q’s a proud man, but even such, he can barely maintain a sitting position without heavily leaning against Bond as he was doing now. The thought of him holding his own spoon would be very ambitious. Still, he keeps a mild look of disdain as Bond begins spooning him small sips of the broth he’d made.

 

Q can't eat a lot of it. By the time the bowl’s half empty he’s starting to doze off again. Eve had given Bond some sleep inducing herbs to mix with the broth because while Q had yet to say anything on it, Bond could tell just by the micro-expressions of Q’s face that he is still in a great amount of pain as his body works to slowly repair itself from the poisoning.

 

Bond slides the tray off the bed, depositing it carefully on the floor before easing Q as he half dozes back down onto the bed.

 

Q wakes up only briefly to settle himself, gently shuffling closer to the line of Bond’s body next to him before closing his eyes again, his hand clutched loosely in the fabric of Bond’s trousers. Briefly, Bond wonders if Q’s awake when he positions himself in such a way.

 

It chews at a part of him, the growing bond-- no, the growing visibility of the bond between them. Because even though the presence of their closeness is now occasionally surprising to Bond, it comes with the continuous realization that he and Q really had always been this close, and maybe it had taken Q almost dying for Bond to realize it.

 

And the thought chews at him because whoever had hurt Q, had left Bond alone. It wouldn’t seem personal to Bond if he hadn’t lived the life he had. More than once Bond’s had to learn that there’s no such things as coincidences when it comes to having his life spared. And being a mere human, it would’ve been much easier to hurt him that it had been Q. Someone had hurt Q to get to Bond, Bond just knows. And maybe it had been because he’d been so openly close to Q. Bond gets the sinking feeling he’d moved Q into the line of danger without even thinking because of their friendship.

 

Bond’s distantly wonders which of his enemies from his military days could have resurfaced here in the North. He is going to have to mount his own investigation once Q is a little better and Bond feels comfortable leaving him.

 

Q makes a noise next to him. Bond presses his hand back into Q’s curls, softly stroking them and occasionally rubbing at the scalp, trying not to think again about how he’d almost lost him.

 

Q will be okay. He’ll live through this.

 

As Bond’s preparing to extract himself, thinking about things he could do to stay in the palace until Q wakes again, the hand gripping his thigh tightens minutely. Q doesn't open his eyes, but he mumbles out, “Stay for a second?”

 

“You need to sleep,” James responds gently, rubbing the space between Q’s neck and shoulder gently. “I’ll come back in the morning.”

 

Q frowns, though, his eyes opening into little displeased slits. “I’m tired of sleeping,” he protests in a way that could, potentially, sound childish. Q pouts but his eyes fall shut again, contradicting himself on what he had just said.

 

But Bond knows. He’s been in recovery himself enough times to know what it feels like to become instantly restless when rest is all you can do. So James entertains him.

 

Instead of having Q sit up again, James slides down so he’s lying parallel to him. Their noses are almost touching, because James is on the edge of the bed and Q doesn't have enough energy to move all the way over. Neither of them mind.

 

Q gives him a grateful look before closing his eyes again and nestling further into the blankets around him. “Talk to me,” he mumbles quietly.

 

Bond spends a second scouring for stories that Q doesn't know. They all stem back to painful times, wretched times; only the ones that’d hurt him too much, he’s refused to tell Q.

 

But maybe, he thinks, it’s time.

 

Bond brings a hand between them, going back to kneading the space between Q’s shoulder and neck, resting his own arm across Q’s shoulder and bicep.

 

“I’ve never told you about Vesper,” he says quietly, less strong than Q even sounds right now. Q’s eyes snap open, surprised and astonished. “You deserve to know,” he adds in response to Q’s bewildered expression.

 

“You don’t…”

 

“I want to,” Bond cuts him off. Because he knows if he doesn't tell him now, the time for it to come bubbling back out may not come around again for a while.

 

“You’ve read the file, so you already know the last of it, the parts that really mattered to my career more than anything.”

 

Q nods slowly.

 

“Our battalion specialized in recon. We were fighters first and foremost, but each of us were specially trained as well in different areas of assassination and espionage. That’s also in the file.”

 

Q shifts his shoulder and hums. Bond continues his ministrations slightly further down the stretch of Q’s collarbone, closer to his shoulder.

 

“We were stationed in the Island of the South Seas, who only occasionally get along with the crown and were not at the time I was sent there. The newest lord was a friend of the king, and we were there to ensure his safety for the first few months of his rule. Vesper was there as a hand of the Lord. She was brilliant, and also a native. I had my initial suspicions, but the lord there trusted her so absolutely.”

 

“I don't know when her illusions started, I don't know what was a lie, and what wasn’t,” Bond says slowly after drawing in a heavy breath. But he’s not worked up about it as he expected to be, and Q’s serious gaze tracking his every expression seems surprised about that fact too. Bond’s calm, calmer than he’d ever been every other time something like this resurfaced, and fear made him turn to a drink.

 

“I suppose all of it was a lie, in reality,” Bond muses. “That’s what Alec’s said. All of it was a lie if she used me, no matter if she loved me or not, and she did.”

 

“We all have our own agendas,” Q says, surprising him. “Feelings and love don't know that”.

 

“I loved her, too.” Bond continues “I’d leave the camp to be with her, just to stay the night. Being close to her elated me, it was intoxicating. It felt like magic between us, which in light of what happened is not wholly surprising.”

 

Bond drops his hand from Q’ shoulder, resting it between their chests. Q reaches up to take it in his own in a show of comfort.

 

“She used her skills to mask the plot to kill the lord. She manipulated me, and him really, into trusting her and the people she worked with. All my suspicions, all my apprehensions, could be extinguished with just a simple touch from her. Anything that my troops, their own suspicions untouched, would tell me, I immediately dismissed as lies.”

 

“The night they killed the lord, they took me too. They were going to kill me, but she struck a deal to save my life.”

 

That part is not in the file. That part surprised Q.

 

“Yes, her illusions only grew stronger then. I wasn't even upset with her for tricking me or for the assassination. I was blinded by what I thought was love. I left the military for her. And we lived together, happy, for about a week. But the people she worked for had an agenda, and they grew afraid that her keeping me as her mind controlled prey would get in the way.”

 

Q speaks up again. Giving a short nod, he says, “Illusions can sometimes show things about the projector to the viewer that they didn’t intend to show.”

 

Bond hums. “They came after her. She was brilliant and smart with politics and they needed her for their plans. One of their people was also an illusionist and he taught me what the opposite of Vespers illusions of love were,” Bond draws in a short breath at the memory of scalding, bone-deep agony. ”It was torture, in the cruelest form. Everything was taking place in my mind but it had felt just like the real thing. Vesper, she saved me in the end. And they drowned her because of it. I went in without a strategy and came out with her body and I haven’t ever been able to decide whose fault that is.”

 

Q watches him closely, still waiting for the fallout that they both seem so surprised still hasn't come.

 

“I killed the rest of them, before I was officially reinstated as a commander. I spent a year tracking down her group and putting them to death. The king was proud enough to learn of my distinguishment  of the rebellion that he excused of treason and reinstated me.”

 

Bond moves his fingers lightly, rubbing up against the back of Q’s hand.

 

“You’re strong, James, to have come back from that,” Q says gently after a second.

 

Bond presses his lips together. “In a way I haven’t. Sometimes I can’t tell if things are real or not; sometimes I’m still afraid that the things I love the most are just illusions.”

 

Q sucks in a quiet breath at that, understanding crossing his face. Q’s always been understanding, at least to Bond, stripping away judgment and just baring himself as a comfort for Bond. Which why it’s so easy right now to speak to him.

 

“I would’ve taught you sooner,” Q says eventually. His grip of Bond’s hand tightens a bit. “Had I known, I would’ve taught you how to tell the difference.”

 

Bond gives Q his best appreciatory smile, thin and gentle. But his stomach flips at the thought because truthfully, until he learned Q was planning to face the threat of the illusionist alone, he hadn’t wanted to know. Some small part of Bond, the part that still screamed his realities weren’t realities, was also was equally afraid that it was right.

 

Bond watches Q’s struggle against sleep again, his eyelids slipping shut.

 

“You need to sleep, Q,”  Bond says gently but firmly, but he doesn’t make a move to move just yet.

 

Q doesn’t argue with him, which slightly surprises Bond. The younger man just nods, pressing his face further into the soft fur beneath his cheek. He falls asleep lying flush with Bond, their faces within mere inches of each other, and their hands clasped between them.

 

Bond waits until his breathing is even to slowly extract himself out of the bed.

   
“Goodnight, Q.”


	11. Chapter 11

After leaving Q’s new room, Bond receives a message from a palace page that he’s needed in M’s main meeting hall. Bond finds Eve and Alec in room already, along with Mallory and Tanner. They’re all sitting around the table when he comes in.

 

They look up when Bond enters the room, expressions grave.

 

“Bond,” Mallory addresses him when he enters. “ The door behind you, please.”

 

Bond closes the heavy wooden door before crossing the room.

 

“How’s fares the Quartermaster?” Mallory asks while Bond takes his seat.

 

“He’s still very weak. But the healers believe that with a decent amount of rest, he’ll be capable of returning to a very minimal amount of work by this time next week.”

 

Bond had expected the news to be well received, but it settles in a grim way in the atmosphere around them. Bond looks around at the three others, confused.

 

Eve clears her throat first, leaning forward.

 

“After the discovery of the Quartermaster’s poisoning, Alec and I were sent back to Myrin to see if we could find any clues as to who exactly was responsible for it.”

 

Bond nods. He didn’t think there’d be much to go on, as he or Q would’ve noticed anything overtly noticeable. But Eve’s face tells him otherwise.

 

“There wasn’t a lot to find, but Eve did have an idea to go North to Malen, to the location you and Q were meant to encounter that illusionist at,” Alec say.

 

Bond’s head shot up at that. He’d gone over many things possibly responsible for Q’s illness, but the illusionist hadn’t crossed his mind until right now.

 

“Did you find anything?” Bond demands, glancing at Alec, M, then back to Eve.

 

Alec shakes his head “Not at first, but Eve cast a spell…”

 

“It tells me any of the spells recently cast in a given area.” Eve explained “Bond, when you and Q were there there was a spell present. It was an illusion spell, and it was cast around the whole surrounding area at the same time Q cast his tracing spell at the same location.”

 

Bond’s heart lurches in his chest. “Something _was_ there then.”

 

M nods. “Someone,” he corrects gravely.

 

“But Q’s tracking spell…”

 

Eve turns fully to face him. “Bond, there’re two explanations for this. Either Q’s spell failed, a user error perhaps, which is unlikely considering his abilities…”

 

“Or the illusionist spell was strong enough to alter Q’s magic,” Bond pieces together. “Is that even possible?”

 

Eve shrugs, sitting back in her chair and looking just as concerned as Bond felt.

 

M steps in, then. ”The question of why you two were left alive then is also still unanswered. With no magic and no way of detecting the threat, you two were practically sitting ducks.” The thought causes Bond to tense sharply. “You two were left alive for whatever reason, and whatever that reason may be, this warlock knows, and we need to figure it out before we find out from him.”

 

The three of them nod solemnly. Bond tosses the new information over and over in his head, trying desperately to think how it maybe could be relevant but there’s nothing there. He is too used to bouncing ideas off of Q.

 

“I’ll talk to Q about it, when he wakes up again. Maybe he has a few ideas.”

 

Eve nods. “He’s bound to”.

 

“Until we have a clearer picture, I’d like to keep the three of you in the palace as well. That will decrease our chances of losing someone in the night.” Mallory says definitively.

 

Bond has to agree. Being in close proximity will also allow them to strategize easier without having to be apart.

 

* * *

 

 

Q is still weak from his bout of sickness, his skin still pale and moist, but he could walk now, and didn't look steps away from death's door, so Bond could breathe a little easier now every time he saw him.

 

Still, Q, for all his wit, couldn't seem to grasp the concept of why bedrest was a necessary part of recovery, and proceeds to bitch up a storm to Bond in the few hours of wakefulness he has sporadically throughout the day.

 

Bond finds himself at the small table in his new room at Mallory’s castle a couple hours after one of these bouts. Q’s still a bit peeved with him, he could tell. The younger man had been quick and biting when they'd last talked, but Bond knew it was just due to exhaustion, illness and admittedly boredom. Q would get over it soon.

 

That isn't the cause of Bond's contemplating silence he's fallen into since he’d started playing a game of solitaire next to one of his lamps.

 

What causes it is the fact that Bond has been so concerned. He still feels guilt at Q’s whole situation, but that’s also now layered with _fear_ that this isn’t yet over. Someone’s toying with them, someone had wanted Q to die, slowly and painfully in front of Bond and he had frustratingly little evidence as to no idea who.

 

Bond reaches forward to flip over a card. King of spades. Spades, the knight suit, an old suit, hard and seasoned with experience, work and death.

 

"They say Spades is the most noble suit," Q’s voice comes from the doorway behind him. He is standing in his sleep shirt, still pale but sweating, the candlelight catching it.

 

Bond had heard him come in. He lets Q take a seat across from him, if not to simply spare them another argument between them.

 

Bond watches Q across the table for a solid second, and Q watches back. Bond sets down his deck of cards on the table out next to him.

 

"But it is diamonds." Bond reaches forward to tap the king of diamonds resting on top of his only stack he’d finished.  "That's the most beautiful." Diamonds being the merchant class, represent truth, value and money. The new art.

 

Q looks at him, expression unreadable, with his black hair clinging to his forehead, and all Bond can think is how relieved he is that Q’s okay.

 

Q licks his lips and shakes his head, tugging the blanket wrapped over his shoulder. When he doesn’t say anything for a long while, Bond reaches forward again and gathers up his cards, shuffling them as Q settles back in his seat.

 

Bond deals out the cards again.

 

“Gambling, Bond?” Q asks once Bond’s finished dealing “Why am I not surprised.”

 

Bond grins. “I feel like it’ll be something you’re surprisingly good at,” he says.

 

Q gets a familiar gleam in his eye.“And what are we betting with?”

 

They end up using pence because Bond has a few on him. It’s pointless fun, really. Q already knows how to play, and he plays well. Bond thinks he has his tics figured out when all of sudden Q turns the tables. Bond ends up playing defensively for the first time in forever against anyone who’s not Alec.

 

They finish after a while of backs and forths, each pulling ahead briefly only for the other to figure them out. They stop when Q leans against the wall for support, his hands shaking a little bit from exhaustion. Bond wins, but not by much.

 

“Back to bed with you then,” Bond says, gathering up his cards then the coins.

 

It’s a testament to how tired Q is that he doesn’t argue with him.

 

* * *

 

 

It was really all too easy.  They’d grown too used to Q being able to take care of himself, and had grown too used to the comfort of their own palace, despite the recent attacks. It was too easy for Q to be taken, weak and defenseless, the guards at his door left for dead.

 

“He’s gone,” Alec says fiercely, storming into the meeting room with Eve at his heels.

 

Bond gets to his feet immediately as soon as they walk in, rage still bubbling in his chest from when M had refused to allow him to leave the castle to look for Q.

 

“Eve used a tracer spell accurate up to a day’s ride, he’s nowhere near us right now.”

 

“How can you be sure?” Bond demands fiercely, “Maybe the spell went wrong.”

 

“It didn’t,” Eve defends. “I tried it three times. There’s no trace of him around here.”

 

“He was here last night. How could he have gone a day’s ride and we not know?” Bond says, then curses, frustration only increasing “We should have expected this.”

 

Eve doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t even look at him, ducking her head, her expression solemn. They’d all woken up early in the morning to the sound of the maids’ frightened shrieking. It was now late midday and none of them had had much rest; they’d been searching restlessly for their missing Quartermaster.

Mallory clears his throat, then, from where he’d been sitting opposite Bond, quiet and thinking.  

 

“There is another explanation,” he says slowly, then adds when everyone turns to him: “The Quartermaster is being hidden from us by the same illusionist who blocked Q’s own spell in Malen.”

 

Realization dawns on Bond. The illusionist had been able to hide himself from Q’s spell, so it would make sense for him to not appear on Eve’s.

 

“So you think they’re nearby?” Alec asks.

 

“Maybe not nearby,” M says carefully, “but possibly closer than we think.”

 

* * *

 

 

“Bond, a raven has come from further in the North. Reports of commotion at one of the abandoned manors there.” M says later that day when he enters the meeting room Eve, Alec and Bond had spent the majority of the day in, brainstorming and worrying about their Quartermaster.

 

Eve leans forward and asks: “The local lord?”

 

“They’ve sent a squadron of men to arrest the trespassers. None returned.”

 

Bond stands up. “That must be where they have him then,” he says quickly.

 

“It’s not very good hiding” Alec says, frowning in suspicion.

 

“Maybe they aren’t trying to hide,” Eve reasons, “maybe they want us to come, it’s probably a trap.”

 

“It certainly is” M says simply, his voice serious. “The manor they’ve taken up residence in is Skyfall.”

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The dialogue during the card game scene is drawn from isthisrubble's summary that accompanied the art used to inspire this piece.


	12. Chapter 12

Bond knows he should wait, strategize, because going in blind could be worse for Q in the long run than his waiting for the hours of nighttime to pass until the sun rose again. Bond knows he’d be stronger with Eve and Alec and whoever else.

 

Bond knows these things. But the thought of Q at the hands of whatever person has it out for Bond right now is enough to invalidate his reasoning almost entirely. 

 

Alec looks like he knows what Bond’s thinking. When they go to bed that night there’s a look in his eyes that just say that he knows Bond’s not going to wait until morning. And he rests a hand on Bond’s shoulder briefly, a silent gesture to be careful. He knows trying to argue about this to James would be useless. 

 

The ride north to Skyfall takes about half a day. It’s midmorning by the time he sees the manor in the distance, sitting as grand as it is foreboding in the moorside. 

 

The small village that had grown up around it is as desolate and deserted as the manor, each person having moved on to one of the nearby kingdoms at the loss of their lord. 

 

There’s not a lot Bond hadn’t been expecting as he approached the manor. He certainly hadn’t expected to walk right through the front door. The bridge to the entrance hall was drawn down, but there are no guards. There haven’t been guards here for years outside of the few castle watchmen that guarded it against thieves or burglars. 

 

Bond walks undeterred through the main doors of the manor. 

 

He briefly wonders if they’ve made a mistake. Frustration and dread bubbles up inside of him at the thought they may have wasted an entire day of looking for Q on this lead. But once he’s inside, Bond knows that Q is somewhere here. He can feel it, a sense of familiarity that has nothing to do with the manor settling deep in his chest. 

 

Inside the main hall is where Bond finds them. 

 

Q’s bound with his wrists tied behind his back, laying on his side on the floor. Bond doesn’t hesitate to go to him, crouching down next to him. 

 

Q’s got his eyes closed, and his breathing is laboured, but it must be from his previous illness rather than pain. There are no visible injuries on him that Bond can see in his initial sweep of Q’s form. 

 

There’s someone else in the room too, in the shadows of the main hall. Bond can only make out the shape of him, but he’s seen it ever since he entered the room. 

 

“It was nice of you to join, Sir Bond,” the voice from the shadows purrs. “I was hoping I wouldn’t have to resort to any more drastic measures to get your attention.”

 

A man steps out of the shadows, fluid and self-assured. He’s nearly the same age as Bond, with salt and pepper hair. His face, though, is what alerts Bond. It’s hauntingly familiar; Bond’s certain he’s seen it before, but he cannot place where.

 

The man steps closer. “Aww, James. You do not remember me?” He gives an impression of a mock pout. There’s a sharp glint in his eye. 

 

Below Bond, Q stirs only a little bit; only enough for Bond, who’s been hyperaware of his movements, to notice. He’s still curled inwards towards Bond with his back to the approaching man. Bond fights to keep from looking down when Q reaches out with more strength than Bond had expected, to grasp his hand and slip something over one of his fingers. It’s cold and metallic. Bond gives the back of Q’s hand a small bump of acknowledgement before it can fold away. He wonders if Q’d been a lot more conscious for the last couple of seconds than Bond had thought.

 

Bond thinks it’s probably best to keep Q’s condition hidden from the illusionist, so he humors him. 

 

“I’m afraid I don’t,” Bond answers the other man’s question placidly, “but I have been told I am getting old.”

 

The other man laughs, deep-throated but humorlessly. He’s now standing a couple of feet away from where Q is lying between them. It takes a lot of self control to not move to put himself between Q and the other man. 

 

“But ah, James. I do remember you. And this place, yes? Quite dreary still, has been ever since we were boys.” The man holds Bond’s gaze as realization spreads through him like a fire. 

 

“Franz?” Bond asks slowly, dread building fast. 

“I knew you would remember,” Franz Oberhauser says delighted. “I don’t blame you though, it’s been so long since we’ve been apart, James.” He reaches up and touches the pale jagged scar on his face that claws down over one of his eyes. The entire thing’s gone a glassy grey where it should be blue. “And there’s this”.

 

Bond clears his throat. “It’s quite the scar,” he bites out.

 

“It is,” Franze agrees with a nod. “Do you remember the day I got it?” He asks the question with such an abrupt shift in tone that Bond’s briefly startled by it. The light, almost playful tone switches to something sharp and dark.

 

Bond does remember that day. He remembers the crowds, the jeering, the wails of agony, the flame. 

 

“Claudius was a terrible man, who feared what he did not know,” James tries “My father would have never--”

 

“Your father left us here!” Franz shouts abruptly, his face going red. “With that man. He left my mother and I for scrap.”

 

Bond is suddenly seeing the image of Franz’s mother, his father’s mistress, burning at the pyre , wide-eyed and screaming. 

 

Bond shakes his head clear when he recognizes the deserted hall again, coming back to himself. Franz is watching him strangely.

 

“So this is about revenge then?” Bond says bitterly. “I was eleven”

 

Franz grins then, a tight-pressed smile. And he laughs, dry and humorless. “That is very similar to what your father said.” 

 

Bond freezes. His father had died in the service of the king, an accident, while his troops were in the high western mountains. 

 

“It was pathetic really,” Franz says, his tone turning playful and light again. He begins walking, pacing in a circle around Bond as if he’s stalking him like prey. “He said the same thing. ‘I wasn’t there, Franz. I had no idea.’ All excuses.

 

“You see, Bond, it’s a thing with your kind. Always wanting to be the better, be above everyone else, anyone different, until the last second.” Franz paces back to where he stood before, a small distance away from Q. He kneels down, Bond’s head’s still reeling from the new information, but he knows enough to place a protective hand over the Quartermaster’s shoulder. 

 

Franz watches Bond shift and smirks. “Excuses make your actions feel justified. They make you feel guiltless, right before you die.” His eyes fall down to Q. “ I made the mistake of killing your father too soon, before I could hurt him the way he hurt me. But decades of planning, building my strength, and waiting, made me realize the best way to hurt you, Bond, and your father still, through you.”

 

Bond’s breathing hard. His hand over Q’s shoulder tightens, hard and protective. 

 

“Everyone you’ve ever loved has died since that day. Your mother, your Lordess, your lovers.” Franz’s gaze flickers down to Q again. “And now your friends.” He stands up and paces a few steps away. 

 

“You see James, I’ve found the greatest way to make people suffer. Torture, murder, it’s all physical, it’s all personal. But emotions, those are tricky little things, and they betray people quicker than people themselves do. I’ll kill your friends, James, the knight and the witch when they inevitably come after you.  But first, I’ll break you. Not kill you, no. But I’ll break you, mentally. And I’ll do it with him.” Franz points and Q stiffens. 

 

Two people appear behind Bond, gripping his shoulders and forearms and pulling him away as another hauls Q up, still sick, pale and weak-looking, over to where Franz stands. They drop Q at Franz’s feet, where he slumps forward a bit but  still manages to remain only  kneeling. He’s awake now, alert, and looking more worried than scared. 

 

“I found out about your partner a little late, I’ll admit, it took me a while to figure out how to kill him. He’s not particularly strong, is he.” Franz gives Q a nudge with the tip of his foot. “But he’s clever. But fortunately it was easy enough to poison him. However, when he lived, and I saw you, how concerned you were for him, I realized maybe there was something about him that I had overlooked. A use for him.” 

 

Q cranes his neck to look up at Franz behind him, confused and worried.

 

“You see Bond, illusions, while they can be strong enough to change everything around you, can only convince you so much... The more you know someone though, the easier it is to convince you wholly to believe in everything you are seeing. The ultimate illusions result in complete conviction. The victim believing so much that everything around him is real, that he lives in it, and cannot return. He lives in a comatose in this world, and lives out his life in the other. The transition back is impossible for the mind.”

 

Franz kneels down behind Q, leaning forward. Q turns back to look at Bond, eyes wild and panicked. Bond feels the same emotions welling up inside him. The guards on either side of him hold him tight, even as he struggles, they leave no room for Bond to try to escape. 

 

“His magic will know you, he’s so familiar with you. He’ll tear your mind to shreds, and when it’s finally done, you won’t recognize anyone in this world, any faces at all. Everything will feel like a lie until you finally find an escape, in death.”

 

Q’s struggling now too, despite Franz being so close to him. But he’s still weak and Franz has an iron grip across his shoulder, strong enough to hold him. “I won’t do it,” Q spits firmly.

 

“Don’t worry,” Oberhauser says lightly. “You won’t even know you’re doing it.”

 

Q starts to protest immediately, panicking. But then he stops abruptly. 

 

Bond’s heart sinks because he knows Q isn’t seeing him anymore. 

 

Franz leans over Q’s shoulder more, looking at his face, then back at Bond. “It’s dark magic, possession is.” He touches a hand to Q’s jugular vein, lingering and stroking. “And thus it… demands a sacrifice, a payment of some sort. Nothing as strong as a life… but…” 

 

Bond watches as the scar above Franz’s eye begins to split apart, blood bursting from the rip. Franz grunts under his breath in pain, but Q jerks sharply all of a sudden. 

 

Bond tenses… and then…

* * *

Bond sees himself in a palace on the sea. There’s salt in the air, the thickness of the humidity is almost too much, but it feels warm and comforting against his skin. There’s someone on the patio. He knows it’s Vesper, and he’s apprehensive. He know’s she’s hurt him, but something about this place, something about her makes him want to give her another chance. It’s several years’ worth of denial breaking in a single second. 

Then Q comes into the room, and he’s got parchments in his hands, and he’s muttering something to James about needing to get ready to go because there’s mermaids, “Fucking Mermaids, Bond!”.

James looks at Q hard. He’s standing there, black hair as much of a mess as it’s always been, eyes bright and green and so painfully beautiful. His eyes flicker over to Vesper, standing at the balcony, and he says, “Oh,” abruptly and stiffly. 

“Oh, my apologies, Bond.” He nods towards her outline. “You should go to her, she’s waiting.”

Bond looks towards Vesper out on the patio, then back to Q. “What about you?”

“Oh.” Q waves his hand dismissively. “I’ll be alright. The same thing, I suppose. Weaponry for the crown.”

“Will you have a new partner?” 

Q blinks, and there's something off about his face. “Most likely.”

Bond turns to look at Vesper again. “And will you be alright?”

Q’s eyes are sad. They’ve spent so much time together. To have it all come to fruition here, in this way, is obviously saddening. But there's something more beneath that. Q looks devastated, almost...heartbroken.

“Most likely,” Q chokes out. Then he clears his throat, face flushing a bright red. “I ought to go then Bond… Er, the mermaids and all…”

His eyes meet Bond’s but they’re wrong. They're green and they’re welling with tears but they’re wrong. 

Instincts tell him to cling to that, that it's important.

Vesper calls his name from the patio again, only this time sounding demanding, urgent. But she had betrayed him, Bond remembers. She’d betrayed him, had had him tortured, twisted his mind with…

Bond whirls back to look at Q who’s watching him closely, and his eyes that weren't his real eyes were sharp. 

 

“Illusions,” Bond breathes.


	13. Chapter 13

 

The illusion shatters around Bond. The great hall returning to his senses around him doesn't even phase him. Across from him he can see Franz’s astounded expression, but only for a brief second because Q lurches forward too abruptly. Bond’s illusion must've been enough to break his.

 

Q twists away from Franz, sharply, before a familiar shimmer slides down his body and he shifts into his panther form. Q then turns and promptly dives at the illusionist behind him.

 

Franz is quick enough to duck out of the way, but not nearly enough to escape the full rake of claws down the side of his neck. He swears loudly in pain as the four deeps scratches began seeping blood. Q lands and spins around, bracing himself on all fours and snarling, the sound echoing through the hall.

 

Franz steadily gets back on his feet though, lifting a hand, preparing to cast another illusion. Q lunges again but misses by a wide enough area that Blnd can tell he was deceived by Franz’s mind tricks. Q winds up landing closer to Bond, then swiveling sharply so he stood between him and Franz, snarling again as Franz straightens himself up and squares his gaze with Bond’s.

 

“A viscous pet you’ve got there,” Franz says humorlessly.

 

Bond shakes his head slowly, fingering with the ring Q’d slipped on his finger earlier when he first arrived. He doesn't have a lot of time. Franz could cast another spell at any second now and repeat this entire nasty process.

 

“He’s not a pet,” Bond says strongly after clearing his throat. “He’s a Quartermaster.”

 

Bond throws the ring, then dives forward to grab Q’s body around the middle, yanking him towards the door, but there isn't enough time.

 

Bond hears the explosion first, and in the same second winds up pinning Q to the floor underneath him.

 

It takes Bond a second to realize he’s not dead.  It's hot, but not unbearably so. He’s still alive.

 

Bond tries to sit up briefly, trying to crane his neck around to see what’s going on. What he sees is a faint purple forcefield surrounding him and the still feline Q beneath him.

 

Q looks just as bewildered as he feels. He can't cast in his Panther form.

 

The smoke is slowly clearing away from around them, but it’s slow. There’s a large amount of debris is still falling from the aged roof. But for a brief second, over by where the main hall doors were, Bond catches a brief glimpse of another shield. It's nowhere near where Franz had been. The smoke parts only briefly for a second, but that's all Bond needs to recognize the two familiar shapes inside.

 

“It's Eve and Alec,” Bond says, relieved, watching the two of them talk about something across the field.

 

Q walks up to Bond and meows, shortly and demandingly. Bond turns his attention back to him.

 

“Yes, I’m okay. How about you? Shifting can’t be too easy on you, especially after recent events,” Bond asks. He kneels down for a second so he’s eye level with Q.

 

Around them the smoke is still clearing, but it's a thin sheen of fogginess around them.

 

Q mewls again, swishing his tail in a gesture that could be seen as dismissive. Bond’s not convinced. He opens his mouth to argue, but is cut short by a deafening roar echoing outside their shield.

 

Q spins around and Bond rockets to his feet as the sound continues, animalistic and piercing.

 

Eve dissipates Q and Bond’s shield as they run to meet up with each other.

 

“How’s Q?” Eve demands, looking at the big cat next to James and then to James himself.

 

“He’s still sick but in this form there's not a lot we can do”.

 

There's another loud screeching roar from the dust still clouding where the ceiling had come down.

“What the hell is that?” Alec demands.

 

“Let's not stay to find out,” Bond says. They all agree as another shriek pierces the air.  

 

They make it across the drawbridge, into the grass on the other side. Bond turns around to look at the entrance of his childhood home, only to watch it abruptly burst, rubble flying everywhere and flames shooting out with it.

 

Suddenly something clicks in Bond’s head.

 

“Remember than dragon from a while ago?” Bond asks slowly as a shape appears in the smoke and dust from the rubble, making its way across the drawbridge. “I think we’ve found it”.

 

Franz hasn't shifted entirely yet. His mouth is deformed, long jagged rows of teeth splitting the skin of the jaw, angling outward. His hands are claws, his skin is scaling and he’s taller, but not fully shifted. Not yet anyway. But he stops in the center of the drawbridge, and begins to shake violently as he starts shifting again, his muscles contracting, and there's the distinct sound of cracking bones and--

 

They don't waste any time. While Franz is at his most vulnerable, Bond and Q rush at him in tandem, thinking the same thing at the same time.

 

Q reaches him first, digging sharp claws into the Franz’s deformed abdomen before he has the chance to move. Unfortunately, he recovers quick swinging up an arm and flipping Q over his shoulder, snapping out with those long vicious teeth.

 

It’s a long enough distraction for Bond to get a good swing in, aiming high, but Franz just disappears. Bond stops short, confused for a brief second, before he’s suddenly there again and the fiery pain of claws raking through the skin of Bond’s upper arm makes him flinch away. The edge of the bridge is there then, the guard rail on it pressing hard against his back. He doesn't have anywhere to go and there's the snap of teeth, too close to his throat.

 

Q slams into Franz again from behind, knocking him forward enough that the snap of his teeth barely misses sinking into Bond’s throat. Oberhauser staggers forward just as an arrow flies from the end of the bridge, lodging itself in his wounded shoulder.

 

The creature gives a mighty roar of agony, wailing loudly. One of its deformed wings lashes out sharply, catching Bond square in the chest and sending him toppling over the edge of the bridge.

 

The last thing he sees is Q being knocked violently out of the way of the half-dragon creature, while distracted by James’ fall.

* * *

 

The water around him is cold. But it’s deep enough to break his fall. He sinks a good portion of the way though, and it's enough to disorient him. He does remember playing here as a child in the moat. His mother had always warned him not too, saying that he’d fall in and never get back out.

 

James remembers that one day he did fall in, though. It was summertime and the water was cool and James had always been a strong swimmer…

 

James kicks off the bed beneath him towards the surface, knowing he couldn't waste any time when his friends needed him.

 

The surface broke and the air around him was cooler than the water. Bond begins swimming towards the spot he’d fallen into as a child. He remembers the event with surprising clarity. Thus, he finds the jagged rocks with their small stair-like formation that line the moat, just within enough distance of each other to be able to climb.

 

“Nice of you to join us,” Alec shouts out to him as James runs towards him. He’s switched out his bow and arrow for a sword now. Bond can see why. Oberhauser had changed all the way, a huge black and gold dragon, standing tall above all of them.

 

“Where’s Q?” Bond asks, after he spots Eve frantically casting spells.

 

“Sorry James, I haven't seen him since you fell,” Alec replies before grabbing Bond and yanking him forward just as Oberhauser throws his head back then snaps if forward again and fire spills out around them. Eve casts a quick enough shield spell to protect them again.

 

“Go,” Alex gives him a shove just as huge jaws snap down at the two of them, James stumbling out of the way just in time. Alec blocks it with his sword, his feet digging into the earth from the force of it. He can't hold it long, but he does long enough for James to draw his own and lash out.

 

Oberhauser jerks away, as Bond’s modified sword pierces through the fae based dragon scales in his skin.

 

In the lurch upward, away from the two of them, Bond gets an idea.

 

“Alec, you were entrusted with the last of the werewolf venom Q had created, yes?” The small vial scavenged from the destroyed remains of Q’s lab had been given to Alec by M in an effort to keep it safe.

 

Alec shoots him the most bewildered look. “Yes, but if you’re about to try and turn into a werewolf, I’m gonna have to veto the idea.”

 

“I’m not. Give it to me,” James says because there's no time. Franz lunges down, this time at Moneypenny. Her forcefield protects her, but it won't hold for long.

 

Alec takes a moment to dig into his pocket before producing the small vial filled with the familiar shimmery silver liquid.

 

Oberhauser seems to take notice of their distraction, because he gives up on Moneypenny and snaps his head to the side, swinging it across and back to them. Alec blocks it again. James takes another swing, but Franz is ready this time and jerks out of the way.

 

He then rears back his head, preparing again to rain fire down upon them.

 

Bond uncaps the venom and douses his sword with it, coating the silver blade. He tosses aside the empty bottle and then charges forward.

 

Franz’s fire flies overhead and engulfs Alec but Bond knows Eve’s already cast another shield spell. The dragon’s head snaps back to look at him, cutting off his assault on Alec. Bond continues charging forward until he’s just under the huge body of the dragon.

 

He briefly glimpses Q, feline body lying limp on the drawbridge behind the massive form of the dragon.

 

Bond doesn't have time to contemplate it. He lashes out with his sword just as the feeling of a long teeth drags down his back as Franz jerks away, a ear-shattering screech filling the air.

 

The venom works fast, Bond knows first hand. And the silver coating of Bond’s sword had been enough to kill wolves with one strike.

 

Franz screeches again, throwing his massive head from side to side. His large wings spread apart, beating once and lifting him off the ground just a bit before he ultimately comes plummeting back down. Bond's almost crushed under a massive foot but he’s tackled out of the way again by a familiar black shape. They roll a little bit down the side of the hill that leads into the moat, but it's not steep enough for them to fall all the way in.

 

Both Bond and Q turn around just in time to see the massive shape of the dragon shudder and then burst into a shower of brilliant golden flakes.

 

“What in the name of the gods did you do?” Alec demands as James and Q come back up the hill to join them.

 

“Remember back in Q’s office, when we were talking about shapeshifters?” James asks, clasping Alec on the shoulder as gold flakes rain down around them.

 

Eve kneels down next to Q, embracing his around his neck. “You stupid kitten,” she chastises.

 

Q meows when Eve lets him go, then pads up to Bond, nudging Bond’s thigh with his head and meowing incessantly.

 

Bond kneels down next to him, giving the panther a short once lookover. Q’s got three cuts across his front legs, all bleeding sluggishly, from claws, no doubt. But they don't appear to be bleeding much at the moment.

 

“Is that everywhere you’re hurt,” Bond asks once he’s finished inspecting the wound.

 

Q mewls again in an affirmative notion, then knocks his head against James’ chin, purring a bit deep in his chest.

 

“Yeah, I’ll be alright too.”

* * *

 

 

They have a field day, stitching up each other’s various scratch wounds from dragon teeth and claws. Bond’s got the worse of it, from the teeth sliding across his back. Once they make camp Eve has him strip out of his shirt so she can properly tend to the wound.

 

Q sits at his feet facing him as Eve stitches up the deepest cuts. Bond manages to keep his face blank, but Q seems to see through it. At the worst of it, Q nudges Bond’s hand with his head and Bond distracts himself by rubbing him between his ears.

 

“Madaleine will have a proper fit when she sees these once we get back,” Eve says, tying off the end of the thread. “But at least you won't bleed out in the meantime.” She stands up and stretches then. Both her forearms are wrapped up to protect the flew slashes she sustained from getting infected. Once she’s finished with Bond she turns to Q.

 

“What about you, cat? How are you doing?”

 

Q’s tail thumps on the ground briefly and he looks over at Bond.

 

“That means he’s alright,” Bond says for him. It’s believable. The three cuts on his forearm have since stopped bleeding. And while Q had still seemed sick and weak back in Skyfall, Bond begins to wonder if maybe that was more of a rouse than anything.

 

“Alright then, well. You two have had the worst of it, today. Alec and I will take turns on watch tonight while you two try to sleep,” Eve says, not leaving room for argument. “And don't think you’re getting out of anything, Bond, Mallory fully intends to have a long talk with you about you leaving once we get back, and Alec and I are still pissed about it.”

 

Eve shuffles for a second, then clears her throat. “But Q’s still alive so it can wait until we get back.”

 

James shakes his head while Eve walks off, no doubt off to go find Alec, wherever he is.

 

James turns back to Q. The feline’s sitting across from him, watching him with familiar eyes but an unreadable expression.

 

“Thank you, Q,” Bond says after a moment. “I'm sorry you got tangled up in all of this.”

 

Q shakes his head, giving a short meow that says ‘It's not your fault’. But James still knows it is.

 

Q has almost died twice in this past week just because of James’ oversight and inability to tie up loose ends. He should’ve been more careful, he could have prevented all of this. He’d been too careless with Q’s life. If only he had--

 

Two heavy paws press down on Bond’s knees as Q balances on his back legs, raising himself so they were at eye level.

 

Q meows again, green eyes piercing. They stay like that for a long second. Bond doesn't say anything, lost for a long moment in the intensity of the gaze, when abruptly…

 

Q isn't a panther anymore. He’s human again, dressed in tattered and slightly bloody clothes. Bond catches him before he can fall back completely and instead, Q lands heavily

on his rump, accidentally pulling Bond off the log with Q in his fall.

 

“Shit,” Q gasps out, worried. “Your back.”

 

“How did you change back?” Bond demands incredulously, ignoring him. “It usually takes you a day.”

 

Q looks as surprised as Bond had about it though. “I don't know” he answers honestly. “I guess I was just thinking how much I wanted to… change back, then, to comfort you.” Q’s blushing a little, now. It’s endearing.

 

“You changed back because you wanted… to comfort me?” Bond asks slowly, a smile playing on his lips.

 

Q’s blush deepens. “I mean, you were being a bloody idiot, as if you could have prevented any of this, I mean honestly, Bond--”

 

Bond leans in and kisses him, lightly and tenderly. Because as much as he likes to watch Q try  to beat around it, they’ve known each other for too long. Q leans in and reciprocates almost immediately, telling Bond his suspicions were correct.

 

The meld into one another, like the way they do when they’re fighting in tandem. Q’s hand comes up and slides across his cheek, resting against the line of his jaw. Q’s mouth is warm, soft, and inviting, and he kisses like he does everything else: sharp, precise, but with careful planning and precision, leaving Bond room to work around him, slotting in with his movements and…

 

“See, I told you. Near death experiences,” Eve’s voice comes from their left, making both of them jump and pull away.

 

“It’s about time, really,” Alec adds, standing beside her. Bond shoots them both a glare. “Oh, but don't let us interrupt you. But the next time you two decide danger is the only way to get it up, please leave us out of it?”

 

“It’s not--,” Q starts.

 

“It’s also nice to see you can change back purely for the power of kissing Bond,” Eve points out with a mock frown, still sounding pleasantly amused.

 

Q groans, dropping his face into his hands. Bond rubs a hand across him back in comfort.

 

“We’ll leave you two to it then, but do remember that Q’s still sick, try not to snog him to death?”

 

The two of them trudge back to wherever they’re taking watch.

 

After a couple of seconds Q lifts his head and Bond draws his hand off of his back. “Have they gone yet?”

 

“For now,” Bond says, glancing to where their two friends disappeared, Q following suit  “But I don't think we’re living this down anytime soon.”

 

Q looks back at him, a smirk on his lips and a glint in his eyes. “ I don’t think I want to...” he murmurs before kissing Bond again.

 

“That wasn’t an invitation to keep at it” Eve calls out distantly from the woods.

 

“At least wait until we get back,” Alec adds.

 

Q laughs into the kiss and breaks away, resting his forehead against Bond’s collarbone. Bond grins too, wrapping his arms around his Quartermaster and holding him tight.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


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